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How a Recruiter Networking Group Can Help You Change Your Specialty

by Veronica Blatt

Have you ever thought about changing your specialty? Or adding a new desk to your existing business? It seems like shifting to a new specialty should be fairly straightforward, but it’s often harder than it seems. Here are three ways a recruiter networking group can help you make the transition:

Peer coaching and industry knowledge. A recruiter networking group consists of trading partners who are already experts in your new field. They will likely be willing to share information and ideas about how to make the transition into a new specialty. This valuable insight can save countless hours, and money, so that you can quickly start making more placements.

Provide candidates and/or positions during the transition. A recruiter networking group consists of trading partners that you can make split placements with. If they have open job orders, you can source candidates in the new specialty. If you have access to candidates in a desired specialty, seek out trading partners with suitable job openings. Split placements can be an extremely effective way to build a new specialty.

Reduce overhead associated with change or expansion. It can be expensive to add a new specialty, or to change your existing business focus. Not only do you have to factor in your valuable time, you may need to purchase new resources, tools, lists, etc. A recruiter networking group can help offset some of those expenses by carrying them for you. You don’t have to pay your trading partner unless you make a split placement. You’re not paying for your partner’s benefits. You don’t have to purchase equipment or invest in training. It’s a “pay-as-you-go” situation that has no, or limited, ongoing fixed costs.

If you’re seriously considering a new recruiting specialty, and you’re NOT part of a recruiter networking group, you may wish to consider joining one. Your existing informal networks are probably made up of recruiters, job seekers, and clients based on your existing specialty. It takes time to cultivate new contacts, and it will be harder to start something new until those contacts are established. Joining a formal recruiter networking group can be a wise decision that will allow you to shift into a new market area more quickly and cost-effectively.

7 Questions to Help Independent Recruiters Take Better Job Orders

by Dave Nerz

It is a tough market for independent recruiters, right? The work you do to fill an open position is 2 to 3 times more than what was necessary before the recession. Clients are slow to move and seem to change their minds about what they want, require and expect with each candidate that you expose them to.

So, are you taking good job orders?

  • Is the client being asked to think their requirements through? Or are you doing mind reading?
  • Is there agreement about what the client asks for? Is it written down and confirmed in writing?

Maybe you have a recruitment process; feel free to share your recruiting process via comments to this blog. If you don’t have a formal process, it may be because you have an informal process that has been working…good for you. Does it ever fail you? Maybe you don’t want to “waste the client’s time” when you know what they mean and you have candidates ready to go or can tap into a recruiter networking group to support you with a quick turn on candidates. As a frequent hiring manager at one point in my career, I can tell you my requirements changed from hire to hire, even with repetitive fills. Sometime you just need different skill sets to work with your team chemistry. Maybe a special skill is required to work a special project or with a specific client. I would not assume anything, as the cost of making that assumption is a waste of your time and the time of your recruiter networking group. Independent recruiters who work on a contingency basis only get paid for the time invested that makes a match. Are you really interested in taking on additional risk?

What if you created a simple form that collected some basic information about the job and then asked 7 straightforward questions of the hiring manager?

Basics: Company, Location of the Job, Job Title, etc

Question 1:  Money

  • Base Salary Range…more for exceptional candidates?
  • Bonus…how realistic is a bonus? Based on what?
  • Commission or other compensation available?
  • Benefits…fit to the market…better/same/worse?

Question 2:  Process

  • Who is available to interview?  Three reserved dates  _________, __________, __________.
  • What is the date you want this hire to start?

Question 3:  Required Skills and Background

Must haves:

  • bullet 
  • bullet 
  • bullet 

Question 4:  Not required but would make a candidate a standout. Dig deep here…get 3 good things!

  • bullet 
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  • bullet   

Question 5:  Why would the candidate choose to leave a good employer and take this position?

  • bullet 
  • bullet   
  • bullet   

These better be good…career path, company equity, flexible hours, high quality co-workers, etc.

Question 6:  The key duties of this job

  • bullet 
  • bullet   
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Question 7:  What will this candidate accomplish in the first 3 to 6 months if they are off to a great start?

  • bullet 
  • bullet   
  • bullet   

Sign it, and ask the hiring manager to sign it, too. Now I can sleep. I hope you will sleep better and make more placements. I know that doing this will separate you from the crowd of independent recruiters that don’t take the time to do this. It is a good investment and it brands you as a quality recruiter.

5 Elements of International Recruiting

by Terri Piersma

Flags of the WorldAs Director of Membership of a global split placement network, I’m fascinated and inspired with the details involved in international recruiting. One can easily conclude after learning the details of these types of split placements that the world is definitely smaller than in the past. Technology has played a major role in this situation.

As an example, I’d like to share with you the five elements of a recent split placement in our network. This split placement highlights how a network of independently-owned recruitment firms with a web-based sharing tool can better serve its clients and candidates; regardless of location in the world.

The 5 elements are as follows:

  1. Recruiter with the position was located in Australia.
  2. Recruiter with the candidate was located in Russia.
  3. Client was a geology company headquartered in Australia.
  4. Position Location was in Guyana in South America; just north of Brazil.
  5. Candidate was a German geologist working for a Russian geology company and doing fly-in/fly-out work in Guyana.

The recruiter with the position searched in NPA’s web-based sharing tool hoping to find a geologist. He found much more than just a geologist. He found a geologist currently doing fly-in/fly-out work in the very country where his position was located – Guyana! Needless to say he was thrilled and contacted the recruiter who had posted the candidate. All worked out during the placement process and the geologist started his new position this past April.

In NPA, this scenario works because we have technology in place to facilitate split placements among our members. In addition, all recruiters in NPA operate under the same Bylaws resulting in relationships built on trust.

How do you achieve success in international recruiting? How do you find candidates when your clients have operations located around the world? Are you a member of an informal or formal recruiter networking group?  How do you build trust with trading partners from different cultures?

Image:  www.freedigitalphotos.net

Social Media for Recruiters: Protect Your Blog from Comment Spam

by Veronica Blatt

Blogging is an important part of social media for recruiters. It’s a fantastic way to generate fresh, relevant content for your website. This will help increase traffic to your website and, when done well, will also boost your SEO efforts and search engine results. You *are* blogging, aren’t you? Read the rest of this entry »

Tips for Improving the Candidate Experience

by Veronica Blatt

A few weeks ago I was getting ready to leave for the Fordyce Forum 2012 and wrote about how to prepare for such an event. This week, my post will focus more on some of the great content I retained while I was there – especially from Greg Doersching, Owner, The Griffin Search Group. He is such a dynamic speaker and not only kept me interested in what he was saying the entire presentation, but also gave me some great information that I thought I should pass on to our readers. The “meat” of his presentation was very detailed and descriptive but for our purposes, I’ll just summarize some of key things.

The first thing Greg talked about was the 5 prime motivators for candidates. Keep these in mind when you think about how you want to present the position to a candidate.

1. Quality of life at and outside of work
2. Major responsibilities and challenges of the position
3. Career growth and marketability
4. Geography
5. Money

Also, a great piece of advice he gave the audience was that you NEVER want to call your best candidates first. Give yourself several calls to get the presentation down correctly before you pitch the position to them.

Another significant thing he mentioned has to do with client details that are kept from the candidate. As a millennial that was in the job market not so long ago, I would have been very skeptical if a recruiter called me and wouldn’t tell me the name of the client. In Greg’s words “we are so paranoid, that we lose business trying to protect business.”

One of the last things he said is that it’s important to close a candidate conversation with either “fact based selling” or “story-telling.” Fact based selling uses numbers to present a thought, and story-telling gives a candidate before and after pictures or success stories. You want to allow your candidate to create a visual of what he/she could be a part of.

Have you ever heard Greg speak? What are your thoughts on these topics?

Hiring Recruitment Consultants Requires Creativity

by Veronica Blatt

Today’s guest blogger is Julie Parsons of Premium Consulting in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Julie is a member of the NPA board of directors. Premium Consulting is a boutique independent recruiting firm that provides professional and practical recruitment consulting advice specializing in retained recruitment, partial services, psychometric assessment and appraisals, outplacement and career counseling.

Gone are the days when a recruitment consultant was happy with a job, good base salary and commission.

These days, hiring a good recruitment consultant is like finding a needle in a haystack.

Salaries in the Aus/NZ region are through the roof and uncapped commissions are being offered to attract top billers. Reputation is important; it can take years to build and days to disappear. What attracts good recruiters to your firm?

Some recruitment consultants want the security of working for a global brand name. It may be difficult to attract great talent to a boutique recruitment agency. Belonging to a global recruitment network, such as NPA, can help an independent recruiting firm compete for talent by offering both global reach for recruitment as well as a global brand. It also can open doors for a recruiter to learn new skills and to start billing in other regions and markets they may have been unfamiliar with.

State-of-the-art technology and tools are also seen as attractive. Our workforce is younger and very tech-savvy; when hiring recruitment consultants, you may need to supply the latest computer/laptop or iPad, along with an iPhone or other smart phone to enable them to operate on the go. Old cumbersome systems and slow databases are a no-no to the young recruiter. Secure job and candidate data and access to job sharing tools can be the difference between filling a job and billing or not.

Flexibility, shorter working weeks, longer holidays, remote workers, job share, these are all terms we are hearing and should look at offering our recruitment consultants, in order to compete and stand out.

Learning and development–what is in it for the recruiter? Where can they go, can they develop, will they be promoted, can they earn an equity role in a company? Do you invest in regular training? Can recruitment staff attend conferences and seminars where they learn the latest techniques and trends from their peer group and the industry’s best?

As our workforce ages, we must adapt and keep up with technology in order to successfully hire top-notch recruitment consultants.

5 Reasons Recruiters Send More Than 3-4 Candidates to Hiring Managers

by Terri Piersma

See No EvilToday, I read a post by Lou Adler on ere.net called Stop Doing Searches Over and Make Twice as Many Placements. In the post, Lou describes the situation where independent recruiters find themselves doing searches over again. He believes this is a problem and if it can be solved, hiring managers would need to see no more than 3-4 candidates per job opening.

The post continues by proposing that the situation of doing searches over most likely results from one or more of the following problems:

  1. The recruiter or the hiring manager doesn’t understand real job needs.
  2. The recruiter isn’t very good at screening candidates.
  3. Good candidates opt out for one reason or another.
  4. The hiring manager isn’t too good at assessing competency.
  5. The hiring manager is afraid to make a mistake.

So, what does an independent recruiter do after the problems are identified? I found it interesting that Lou Adler suggested an action that involved both the recruiter and the hiring manager – an online workshop. The workshop is called Hiring Manager and Recruiter Partnership Online Workshop and is actually a two-part workshop. The first online session will be held July 24. The second one will be held July 31.

I recommend you consider at least reading Lou Adler’s post, Stop Doing Searches Over and Make Twice as Many Placements. If you, as an independent recruiter, are able to convince a hiring manager of the severity of the “doing searches over” problem regardless of the cause or causes of the problem, then you have successfully influenced the hiring manager. However, I don’t see this happening if your relationship isn’t viewed as a partnership with a common goal.

Is there a hiring manager with whom you would like to share this post?

 

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

IT Hiring Outlook Leads to More Split Placements

by Veronica Blatt

database tableJust when we all thought the Global Financial Crisis was solidly behind us, a smattering of not-so-great news reports has people getting jittery all over again. While it’s true that overall unemployment in the U.S. is far too high for comfort, and there are serious concerns about European debt, I am not convinced that a double-dip recession is imminent. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher actually DECREASED to 3.9% last month. Read the rest of this entry »

5 Best Practices for Independent Recruiters Using Facebook

by Dave Nerz

facebook logoFacebook, Facebook, Facebook! Even more with a flawed IPO, Facebook is still a topic of conversation and debate. If you are an independent recruiter that thinks Facebook is a fad that will go away soon, my guess is that you are also big into rotary dial phones and typewritten letters. Although the peak of popularity will at some point crest, it seems that Facebook will be with us for the foreseeable future. So as an independent recruiter, perhaps with the aspiration of becoming a global recruiter, how are you using Facebook in your recruitment process?

  1. Add Valuable Content
    • Post quality content that job seekers would find useful or relevant
    • Make sure your posts for your recruiting organization include a visual
    • Consider video where appropriate
  2. Systemize Your Use of Facebook
    • Connect to other software applications to auto feed birthdays or milestone events
    • Make it a routine so that it gets done on the same day every week
    • If you use xobni.com integration with Outlook, it will show you who is on Facebook
  3. Promote Your Facebook Presence
    • Promote on items that candidates will see…every email, business cards, job postings, website, letterhead, and online adverts
    • Advertize where candidates gather, including in your office and reception areas. Facebook is a global phenomenon. The use of Facebook can enhance your status in a global recruiters marketplace.
  4. Tell and Ask
    • Tell candidates and employees that your recruiting organization is on Facebook
    • Ask if they are on Facebook
    • Ask employees, candidates, clients and suppliers to “Like” your site
  5. Engage in the Conversation
    • Make sure you reply to others’ comments and posts; no one likes to be ignored
    • Allow/insist that your staff engage in the conversation too; people get tired of the same voice all the time

Facebook is here to stay and for independent recruiters to compete in a global recruiters marketplace every opportunity to promote your recruiting organization must be leveraged.  Keep it simple, make it routine and your Facebook presence will become easy to maintain.

P.S. Please connect with NPA at http;//www.facebook.com/npaworldwide

image courtesy of etechmag.com

Independent Recruiters: A Little Preparation Goes A Long Way

by Veronica Blatt

As I pack up my desk and bags to head to Dallas, TX for a couple days to attend The Fordyce Forum, I find myself also preparing for what is sure to be a great event and even greater networking opportunity for me. No doubt, it will be the people I meet that will make the event worthwhile – not to mention the knowledge and training I will pick up along the way. This morning I prepared few ideas and goals that I think will be crucial to my success at The Fordyce Forum. Having said that, I thought it would be rude of me not to share my prep-strategy with our readers. Granted, as recruiters yours might be a little different, but I think the same basic fundamentals are there.

  • Create an elevator speech:  rehearse a 30 to 60 second speech that identifies who you are, what you do, and why you are there. As an example, mine is below. Depending on the days events and who i’m talking to, this will obviously change a bit. It’s a starting point nonetheless.

    “Hi, my name is Annie Weller and I’m with NPA, The Worldwide Recruiting Network. Our network’s primary goal is to help our recruiters make more money through split fee recruiting and increase opportunities for their clients and candidates. We currently have about 400 member firms on 6 continents with the average member’s ROI at more than 800%. Our members share between 7 and 10 million dollars annually and their membership in NPA represents the difference between an average year and a good year. I’m here for the next couple days to talk to recruiters who are interested in increasing revenue through split placements. Are you interested today or in the coming days to talk further?”

  • Set goals: If you don’t set any goals, how do you know if you are successful? Try to make them as specific as possible and break them out into categories.
  • Identify a strategy: Review the schedule or agenda and decide which sessions would be most beneficial for you to attend.

These are obviously very basic ideas; however, I do feel a lot more prepared than before I nailed down my elevator speech, goals and strategy. I am a very “dive-in-head-first-kind-of-girl” so this type of preparation is not something I do very often. I have to admit, though, I feel much more confident

What do you do to prepare for this type of an event? Are you attending The Fordyce Forum? If so, I’d love to connect with you!

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