We have written many times about the importance of having a proactive recruiting process as opposed to the passive “post and pray” approach. In fact, the Talent Strategy Collection offers a course in how to create a proactive search process (Hire the Best).
Benefits include:
- Faster results
- Allowing you to control the process
- Having higher quality candidates
Running a proactive search is not difficult, and we feel that anyone can do it successfully. However, many people complain that proactive searches take too much time and are difficult to manage. We often have clients who have unsuccessfully run their own searches (either passive or proactive), before coming to us for help.
Here are four tricks that our recruiters use to efficiently find amazing talent for our clients:
Having a standard process that we follow
Our recruiters follow a standard process for each search. The process has been honed over 10 years of use and helps us to efficiently manage each search without duplicating our efforts. One of the key benefits of our search process is that it allows us to batch activities like candidate identification and outreach, so that we do not waste time by needlessly jumping between tasks.
Being intentional about the candidates we go after
Our approach is to cast a narrow, but deep net when we look for candidates. Instead of reaching out to everyone with a similar job title, we take a few minutes to look at their background to make sure they have the skills we are looking for. Only reaching out to candidates we are confident will fit the profile means that 80%-90% of the people we speak with are capable of filling the position. This significantly reduces the amount of time we spend pursuing unproductive candidates. In addition, being intentional allows us to focus on other important aspects of the search such as diversity.
Being prepared for each step of the process
We have scripts for each step of our process. This allows our recruiters to move interchangeably between searches and means that we do not need to recreate the wheel every time we reach out to a new candidate.
The scripts we use include:
- E-mail templates covering the first candidate outreach (either through e-mail, LinkedIn or Indeed).
- E-mail templates covering the presentation of the job description and follow up to schedule the first phone call.
- An overview of the company and position to use during the first phone call with the candidate.
- An interview guide that covers the questions to be asked during the first interview.
- A report template to consistently present the results of each candidate’s interview.
Being persistent
We tell our clients (and our recruiters) that recruiting is a marketing process. Like any marketing effort, if often takes multiple “touches” before a customer (or candidate) responds.
We actively track our candidate lists and follow up repeatedly with each candidate to make sure they have seen the information and to set up phone calls or interviews. The number of attempts we make depends on the step of the process: Initial outreach (2-3 attempts); follow up on sending the job description (3-4 attempts); setting up an interview (2-3 attempts). Many successful candidates did not respond to our first attempt to contact them.
Leveraging these four tricks will help you and your team more easily recruit winning talent. To help you get started, we are sharing our Recruiting Process Checklist for you.
Click on the link and use the promocode SIGREDPROCESS100 to download the checklist for free!
Need more help?
Please reach out to me (mike.dergis@sigredgroup.com) at the Sigred Group. We would be happy to discuss your recruiting needs and offer ways we might support you.
