There are two questions that recruitment managers and business owners often ask me most during their recruitment training or coaching sessions which are:
1) “How can I hire winners consistently?”
2) “Why is it that we can find great people for our clients, but struggle to find star performers for ourselves?”
Well, the good news is that your ideal person does exist, the down side is that it can take time, energy and patience to find them. So here are five strategies you shouldn’t miss to track down the best of the best:
1. Network, network, network…
I can’t stress the importance of networking and asking for referrals. The more time you spend meeting and talking with new talented recruiters, the more valuable your network will become. LinkedIn is a complete Godsend for this and a tool that you can easily network from.
Free 8 Week Induction Plan For Resourcers
Exactly What You Need To Cover In The Initial 8 Weeks To Successfully Train and Onboard New Resourcers…
2. Hire an “Up-and-Comer”
Hiring inexperienced “up and comers” can be a smart move as long as you have the right interview process, on boarding structure and training to funnel them into. Inexperienced people may take a little longer to get up and running – not much though (3-4 months) but:
a) they haven’t learnt bad recruitment habits
b) you can train them to fit into your culture
c) in my experience the “right” ones stay with your business much longer
There are also some brilliant apprentice schemes that give you the funding to train and develop your talent. Several of our clients have had stunning results from hiring apprentices. If you want more information on this, please email me at enquiries@centredexcellence.co.uk
One caveat: Be sure you do due diligence to ensure they have the right attributes and beliefs, have a track record of success (even if it’s outside of work) and are ready to take this next step.
3. Hire an Internal or Part Time Head hunter
More and more recruitment businesses are hiring internal recruiters or researchers because they can spend 100% of their time head hunting and being proactive about finding candidates, which means you build up market intelligence and a pool of great talent. It only takes them to find one great candidate to get a ROI.
If you can’t afford someone full time, consider a part time researcher who maps the market, makes the initial call and then passes the leads over to you to follow up. This will save you lots of time. You can also outsource this initial research abroad.
To the recruitment team you can assign them office uniforms in this way, the people that are coming to the interviews can identify them easily and approach to them.
Free 8 Week Induction Plan For Resourcers
Exactly What You Need To Cover In The Initial 8 Weeks To Successfully Train and Onboard New Resourcers…
4. Find and Develop Relationships with Great Rec 2 Rec’s
Do not underestimate the value of a good Rec to Rec – they can make you millions if you invest time finding the good ones and engage and look after them.
Because so many recruitment businesses fall into the trap of shunning them, they really miss out on something special. I know of several great R2R consultants who have single handedly helped build recruitment businesses from nothing into multi-million pound organisations by delivering great people.
What you need to remember is that there is high demand for good recruiters, so when a R2R has a great candidate, they can pick the clients they want to work with. Make sure your:
- Offering really stands out, it’s unique – i.e. one client gives consultants breakfast each day – a small thing but something worth shouting about.
- Treat the R2R with the same respect you would expect from your clients
- Pay a decent percentage i.e. 20% or more. Think about how motivated you would be to place your best candidate for a 15% fee….
5. LinkedIn Groups
If you are looking for someone with a very specific skill set or work experience, check out LinkedIn groups. LinkedIn has a group for almost every industry or topic and the odds are high that potential candidates are a member of a group that is targeted toward their professional background and interests. To get more info from candidates, most recruiting agencies started using reverse phone lookup for free since 2010.
Join the group and then search for people within it that are located in your targeted location.
Happy hunting!
So there you have it – 5 strategies to hire star candidates.
I hope you found this article useful.
If you want to learn how to set up your business, so that it stops under-performance once and for all, then join my free webinar. Click on this link to sign up: The 5 Secrets Our Clients Use to Build 7 & 8 Figure Recruitment Businesses
