Over my 24 years in recruiting, I have heard lots of absolutes …

“Internet candidates are only the low hanging fruit”...

“If they won’t give you an exclusive, never work with them”...

“You’ll never get anywhere with HR”...

You’ve never heard any of these before, right?

Recruiting is NOT a world of absolutes.  It is also not a world of either/or.  Recruiting is a world of ANDs!  Whether you are doing business development and searching for new openings, or you’re a  recruiting beast looking for the best talent, there is not just one process to follow.  

Client Development

When I started, client development (prospecting) was primarily done one way:  have a list of companies, whether that be from some database or a list of want ads in the newspaper (remember those things), and call-call-call.  When you got to the bottom of the list, you call the list again...and again...and again.  Sound familiar?

The internet was still in its infancy of capabilities.  Websites were comically bare-bones compared to today and Monster.com was primarily for the IT industry.  If you had a friend visiting a different town that you wanted to market in, you’d plead with them to bring you back the yellow pages from their hotel room.  Yup, those were the days.

Flash forward to the present day… We have SAAS services that have almost every contact you could imagine.  We have multiple job boards within each industry where companies are promoting their openings.  There are artificial intelligence platforms that believe they can match jobs to candidates successfully.  There’s this little website called LinkedIn.com that you can use for your marketing efforts and work to build an online brand (see my previous articles, “Be a Champion for your industry” and “The Power of Storytelling”).

There are some recruiters who have shifted primarily to digital marketing.  Send an email...send a text...send an Inmail … I am all for working smart, but this career does not have an “easy” button.

If you are going to be successful in client development, you need to utilize the “AND” strategy:  

Make marketing calls, AND …

Call with an Impact Player, AND …

Call with a capabilities pitch, AND …

Partner with HR that values you, AND …

Send emails, AND …

Text, AND …

Send Inmails, AND …

Send market-focused email campaigns, AND …

Search job boards, AND …

Create great branding content, AND …

Attend industry-related conferences, AND …

AND … AND ...

Talent Development

Recruiting has evolved much the same way over the past 20+ years.  When I started, you would build a list of competitive companies in the geography where your client was located, work to find the names of the people within those companies, call and talk to a whole bunch of people who weren’t even close to what you were looking for because the admin didn’t know what they actually did, to find a few that were actually qualified.  Then you would work to see if they were the right fit for your client’s opportunity.  If you couldn’t find them in the local market, you would work in expanding geographic circles and repeat the process.  There was not a database of people other than what you had built yourself.  You explained to a hiring manager that the reason you are worth 30% is that we can find what you can’t/won’t find with their newspaper ad.

The number of recruiting avenues we have available to us right now is too numerous to list.  But, the 200-pound gorilla in the recruiting world is LinkedIn.  No longer do you need to make a call to a random name hoping they do what you’re looking for because you can see their LI profile and have an idea of their background.

My fear is that far too many recruiters are exclusively LinkedIn recruiters.  When they get an opening, the first and last thing they do is search LinkedIn.  Sometimes it works...heck, many times it works.  But, sometimes it does not.  The recruiters that are so reliant on LinkedIn then look lost.  They curl up in the corner and rock and forth because they can’t find the talent to fill the role.  I am sure that none of you reading this article has been this recruiter…

Implement the AND strategy here as well:

Use LinkedIn to recruit, AND ...

Make targeted recruiting calls to professionals within competitive companies, AND ...

Send email campaigns to a targeted list of potential candidates, AND ...

Search your database, AND ...

Ask for referrals, AND …

Post your positions on the right job boards, AND …

Create compelling digital content and build your digital brand, AND …

Become an industry thought leader, AND …

General recruit, AND …

Connect with Universities that graduate students within your industry, AND …

Attend conferences, AND …

AND …,AND …

Don’t just ride Space Mountain

If you were to go to one of my favorite places on earth, Disneyworld, I highly doubt you would only ride the same one ride over and over again.  Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely a couple of rides worth doing multiple times.  But, if you are going to the “happiest place on Earth,” would want to ride them all.  The same holds true in our world.  When you are marketing or recruiting (you know, the old names for what we do), don’t just do one thing.  It doesn’t matter how good you are at that one approach.  Utilize multiple approaches and you will find your success rate increase!