Any agency recruiter or search consultant will tell you that recruiting is NOT an easy profession. However, that doesn’t mean you have to make it overly complicated, either. In other words, people—including recruiters—sometimes make things more difficult than they have to be. Unfortunate, but true.
So how can you simplify recruiting success from the perspective of an agency recruiter or search consultant?
First, let’s define recruiting success from the perspective of an agency recruiter or search consultant. Making placements is the definition of success, ideally ones that produce hefty placement checks. The bigger, the better. So the ultimate goal is to make placements with big fees and make them as consistently and as quickly as possible.
Simple recruitment tips to focus and maximize your efforts
Enjoying more recruitment success as a search consultant requires a certain amount of focus. Not only that, but your focus must also be on the right things. Where you spend your time is vitally important. You can work hard all day, but if you’re not working on the right things, then you will never make a placement. It’s that simple . . . and it’s happened to more than one recruiter who eventually left the profession.
The good news is that we’re currently operating in a candidate-driven market. It’s good news because in this type of market, employers are more than willing to hire. After all, the National Unemployment Rate has been hovering near historic lows for many months. Quality candidates are scarce in most major industries, and in some specialized niches, they’re practically non-existent. However, that does NOT mean that the marketplace is “fool-proof,” so to speak.
Focus is still incredibly important, regardless of how good the economy is (or isn’t) and how much of a candidates’ market it is (or isn’t).
To help us focus properly on simple recruitment solutions, we’re going to draw upon the wisdom of recruiting industry trainer Jon Bartos. According to Bartos, there are two things that agency recruiters and search consultants should be doing to make more placements.
#1—Increase your call volume.
According to Bartos, these two simple recruitment tips are centered on both quantity and quality. This first tip, as you might have already guessed, is centered on quantity. Specifically, it involves making a lot of marketing calls to clients and prospective clients for the purpose of securing a high volume of job orders.
“It’s about getting on the phone and making connections,” said Bartos. “This is a candidates’ market, so recruiters have to increase their marketing calls and their recruiting calls.”
But that’s just the first step.
#2—Be very selective about which job orders you work.
The second step is making sure that the job orders you choose to work are of very high quality. Because if they’re not of high quality, then you increase the chances that you’ll be embarking upon multiple “wild goose chases.” And you can’t place wild geese.
“You have to be very choosy about what you work on,” said Bartos. “You should only work on the ‘A’ search assignments, the ones that are qualified.”
So in the argument of whether quality is better than quantity in terms of recruitment success, the answer is . . . both. In essence, you start with quantity, building up as many job orders as possible so that you can choose the highest quality orders from the bunch. It stands to reason that if you have 20 job orders as compared to only five, then the numbers are more in your favor in terms of quality.
As a result, you can be selective and only work on those orders that have the highest probability of turning into placements. Which, of course, turn into placement checks.
Simple recruitment solutions for training and education
Another simple recruitment solution for making more placements is to engage in continuous training and education. And it just so happens that Top Echelon has an extensive training library of free recruitment training courses. These online courses are recorded versions of Top Echelon’s Expert Recruiter Coaching Series of webinars.
These webinars touch upon a variety of recruiter-related topics. These topics deal with both candidates and clients. As always, our goal with these webinars (and corresponding videos) is to help recruiters make more placements.
In addition to training and webinars, Top Echelon offers other recruitment solutions. These solutions include the following:
For out more about the recruitment solutions that Top Echelon offers to agency recruiters and search consultants!