As an owner of a recruiting firm, you may have often heard the saying that, “half of something is better than all of nothing.” This statement relates to adding revenue to your firm with incorporating split placements in your business model. Having a whole network of recruiters sharing their talents can only bring about a wealth of strong candidates and dedication that is sometimes missing or hard to find in a small independent recruiting firm. The goal with adding split placement revenue is to increase profit without having to increase overheard; you want the network to work for you. Read the rest of this entry »
Get Serious About Making Split Placements
by Sarah Freiburger3 Reasons to Have a Salary Survey Tool
by Veronica Blatt
Today’s guest post is from Megan Wilkes, the social media & marketing manager at JXT. JXT simplifies marketing opportunities for employers and recruiters in the digital world and has created SalarySpy, a smart survey tool that recruiters can quickly and simply embed into their websites, for tracking salaries in their sector or niche. It provides clients and candidates with a monitor of where the market’s sitting on salary by job type. And it gives the recruiter a position of ‘authority’ in their game. Nice. Learn more at http://www.salaryspy.com.au/
We all know what a salary survey is… but what benefit do those [smart] people get out of running them, and how can producing a salary survey help out your company? Read the rest of this entry »
Work Smarter, Not Harder, and Stop to Smell the Roses
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.
Work-life balance is being able to balance your personal life with your career. No one should sacrifice one over the other. Read the rest of this entry »
LinkedIn Tricks for Job Seekers
by Dave Nerz
As a recruiter you have know-how and tips job seekers crave. With the landscape of recruiting changing so fast, have you kept up? For example, LinkedIn tricks. Are any of your candidates not using LinkedIn? Most likely about 95 to 100% are on LinkedIn, but far fewer know the things you should know as a recruiter. Here are my favorites to share:
Did you know you can edit your endorsements? It is simple. Just go to Edit Your Profile, scroll down to the Endorsements Section and hit Edit. Start the clean-up. So if you have goofball friends that have voted up your “accounting skills” when you are a sales professional, get busy making the change. I had lots of one-off floaters from someone that knew me 25 years ago. It helps to keep things clean. Tell your candidates to do this before the client looks them up during a due diligence process. Read the rest of this entry »
6 Steps to Social Media Recruitment Success (Steps 5 and 6)
by Veronica Blatt
Today’s installment is courtesy of guest blogger Mariah Gillespie. Mariah is the founder of Social Media Superstar and worked for 2 years as Social Media Manager of JXT Consulting, an agency specializing in online marketing strategies for recruiters (Sydney, Australia). Mariah has helped some of the largest recruitment companies in Australia utilize social media platforms in the recruitment space (Chandler Macleod, Adecco, Drake) and has spoken at dozens of conferences on social media recruitment. Contact her at mariah@socialmediasuperstar.net.
Happy 2014! I’m back with the final installment of my 6 Steps to Social Media Recruitment Success, Parts 5 and 6. Click here to catch up if you missed Steps 1 and 2 and click here to catch up on Steps 3 and 4. Read the rest of this entry »
Agency Recruiters: When you can’t beat your competitors, join ’em!
by Veronica Blatt
Agency recruiters (at least, most of the recruiters I know) are a notoriously competitive bunch. They like to be first, they like to win, and they like to tell stories about it. They do not, as a general rule, appreciate losing placements to a competitor agency. So you might be surprised to hear that some former recruiting rivals have figured out it can be more lucrative to work together than separately.
In our network of independent recruitment agencies, we do not offer ‘exclusivity’ based on territory or occupational niche (one of the things that makes a network different from a franchise). Recruiters who join NPA are often looking for trading partners who work in similar markets. Sometimes agency recruiters will find out that their arch rival is an NPA member, and they may hesitate to join NPA because of that.
One of my favorite NPA stories involves two such recruiting rivals. I’ll call them Bob and Steve. Steve was a longtime, successful NPA member. Bob worked for a firm that was considering NPA membership. Bob and Steve worked the same niche, with a lot of the same clients. Over the years, Bob lost a fair number of deals to Steve, so he wasn’t too thrilled about “joining sides” with his rival. But you know what? Bob learned that even though they had a lot of the same clients, they didn’t have ALL the same clients. More importantly, they weren’t always working on the same jobs from the same clients. Their candidate databases weren’t identical, either. And that meant that Bob actually got to work on MORE placements than he did when he and Steve were competing with each other. Bob and Steve have a great trading relationship in NPA, with each of them ultimately making more money by working together (and sharing fees) than they did when they didn’t pool their resources. Not only that, they’ve become great friends as well.
The point of this story is that split placements can help agency recruiters serve their clients more efficiently, even when it may seem both recruiters are ‘competing’ for the same business. Working cooperatively allows agency recruiters to have more deals in the pipeline and can speed up the hiring process. As the old cliche goes, “When you can’t beat ’em … join ’em!”
What’s stopping you from working with your competitors?
Closing on Objections: Recruiting, Search, Placement, and Staffing
by Sarah Freiburger
The book “Closing on Objections” was written in 1984 by Paul Hawkinson and is still a best seller today for independent recruiters trying to convince a prospective business to turn in to a client, or persuade a passive candidate to enter the job market through agency recruiting. These tips are useful for old professionals as well as those starting recruiting businesses that are determined to close the deal.
Recruiting and placement is the toughest sales job for the sole reason that it has two unknowns: the candidate and the employer. Closing a sale in recruitment is simply motivating, instructing, encouraging, and reassuring people that they have made the right decision by doing what you want them to do. Here are some highlights from the book that you might try to incorporate in to your closing practice.
The Tie-Down
These will come at the end of your sentence or presentation. You are able to tell the truth as seen by the client or candidate, thus having them agree with you as a response, which is a small victory because it gives you the “yes.” Read the rest of this entry »
Recruiting Business Resolutions…Better Habits equal Better Results
by Dave Nerz
Happy New Year! It is not a bad idea to set recruitment goals at the beginning of each new year. In fact, there is good evidence that indicates that those that set goals and then are held accountable are far more likely to hit those targets. I find that goals that are about new recruitment habits and behaviors are better drivers of results than those goals that define the result only without addressing the behaviors that help you attain new benchmarks.
Here are a few behavior-based kinds of targets to consider that will drive a positive result for your recruiting business in 2014:
Know when to say “NO” and do so more often. Read the rest of this entry »
Calendar of Global Recruiting Conferences
by Veronica Blatt
I wrote in a previous post that independent recruiters should invest in professional development as one of their resolutions for the new year. Below is a partial list of just SOME of the global recruiting conferences taking place this year. No matter where in the world you are located, there are ample opportunities for training, education, and peer networking. Make a commitment to attending one or more of these industry events!
The Global Recruiter UK Summit, February 11, London, United Kingdom – This year’s program promises to help recruiter attendees keep up with the changes in our fast-paced environment as well as preparing for the future. Read the rest of this entry »
Make More Placements by Selling Emotions
by Veronica Blatt
Today’s post is courtesy of guest blogger Neil Lebovits. Neil Lebovits, CPA, CPC, CTS, before taking the industry by storm as a trainer and top class consultant, was a global president for Adecco, the world’s largest staffing & recruiting firm, where he sat on the global executive team. Previously, Neil was the president and COO of Ajilon Professional Staffing for North America, where he oversaw over 300 offices. Neil has done it all in the industry: permanent & temporary placement, sales, branch management, regional management, COO & president. He founded a leading industry training & development company, The Dynamic Sale, in 2009. Neil will be a featured speaker at NPA’s Global Conference in New Orleans, March 6-8, 2014.
Simply put and clinically proven…people buy for emotional reasons, but they justify it with logic!
Yes. People are persuaded by EMOTIONAL reasons and then they will try to back up their decision and prove it was logical. Yes, they really bought that Rolex for prestige and not because it’s so well made (even though it is well made). Therefore, you need to always be selling/ persuading using emotions! Sure, you need to continue to throw out the usual pros/selling points/logic…they’ll definitely need that! HOWEVER, it won’t really persuade them. It will just provide the very necessary “justification.” Read the rest of this entry »