Today’s guest blogger is James Seidel with James Seidel & Associates located in Kelowna, BC, Canada. JSA is an owner-operated firm with clients across western Canada. The firm primarily places candidates in I/T, engineering, and sales. James is a former I/T Trading Group Chair and is currently serving on NPA’s Board of Directors .

The low hanging fruit in the recruiting world is easier than ever to find. Substitutes for recruiter networking such as LinkedIn, Google, Monster and a myriad of technical resources are available at a reasonable cost to every employer and recruiter. With a minimum of effort and recruiting talent, one can pepper the web with advertisements and review lists of hundreds of employees with a few clever clicks of the mouse. The job seekers send in their resumes and respond to the first email they receive and voila – there’s a list of candidates to show to the hiring manager. Done, right?? For some, yes. But what about the companies looking for the very best? The ones looking for just the A players? Is that list reflecting the very best people on the market? No, it’s not – it is a very small snapshot of the folks who are looking at that moment.

Recruiting is still hard work – that’s why it pays so well when it’s done right and the best in the business are still charging a hefty fee for the service. What are we still able to do that the hordes of in-house recruiters are unwilling or unable to do? We pick up the phone and find out where the candidates are. Oftentimes, the databases of thousands of people we have amassed over the years in the industry give us an instant head start. We can identify our target companies. With a few clever keystrokes we have a list of people who look like they have the skills we need. Now select a few people we have dealt with in the past to give us some key information on who the real performers are. Remember, recently departed employees are often better sources of these opinions than the folks who are still there and don’t want to see the best folks leaving. (Pretty hard for the in-house recruiters to find those folks and best of luck getting them to give them any information.) Now time to start making those calls. No secrets, no cloaks and daggers, just the beginning of some career-based conversations. This is another big, BIG difference between US and THEM. We are here to offer insights into market opportunities in the best interests of that candidate for the rest of their careers. An in-house recruiter is here today, gone tomorrow, and only interested in filling one job, right now, for one company. No relationship, no long term lead generations or referrals, no trust, no reason to stay in touch if that company happens not to be of interest. Their networks don’t have the power ours do. They can’t. So use the tools everyone else uses, by all means. But combine them with the recruiter networking you already have and now you’ve really got something to sell.

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