One of the things that keeps me busy during the day is a site I started less than a year ago called RecruitingBlogs.com – It’s a social network for recruiters looking to share ideas and help out others.

When I started RecruitingBlogs.com, I ran a contest to come up with the Best Recruiting Tip and the prize was, go figure, a year subscription to the Fordyce Letter. The winner was a guy named Harry Joiner and I would like to post his answer here.

Harry Says:

The best recruiting lesson I ever learned is that the odds of my closing a search skyrocket when I get my candidates to help each other get the job. Here’s how I do it:

At the beginning of a search, I assure my candidates that I will do every-ethical-thing in my power to help them get the job.

HOWEVER: In good faith, they agree that if they get knocked out of the search, they will make themselves available by phone to discuss my client’s interview process with all surviving candidates.

For example, imagine that I submit six highly-qualified candidates for the same VP of marketing job. Usually, four will get knocked out before the two survivors get called in for final interviews. My method allows the final two candidates to have confidential, in-depth calls with the four “dead” candidates before going in for their final interviews. From what I hear, a ton of outstanding intel is traded among these executives.

What’s in it for the “dead” candidates? A great networking opportunity to help a colleague who’s about to get a plum VP-level job at a company they respect.

What’s in it for the “live” candidates? Valuable intelligence.

What’s in it for me? Usually money.

I think it’s brilliant. I am not so sure that in every case, your candidates will agree to this but it is so clear that if they do agree, magic is going to happen.

Are you in a sharing mood? What are some of the best tips you can share? Oh, and one more thing – Are you going to be in Vegas for the Fordyce Forum this June?

A couple of things about domain names. The.com is far better than all of the other extensions. When people see www.something.something, they will remember it as www. something.com

It has to be the kind of name that allows your audience to know exactly what they will find there when they get there. If you place people in the video industry, VideoJobs.com would be a real good name to have. It’s better than VideoJob.com in my opinion but in every case it will be different. In this case, this is what I think.

Before you start thinking about wonderful website functionality and all that fancy stuff, you need content and the way to get it is by writing it and using something called RSS. Set up a blog on either wordpress or blogger and point your new and perfect domain at that blog. It’s easy to do.

Start writing about things that will interest your target audience – both candidates and clients. Make sure your articles are rich with keywords that your target audience will certainly include in search strings while doing things related to their current job.

The wonderful thing about a good domain name is when you do decide to take it to the next level, your domain name will start showing as sponsored links on Google. Because it’s a great name, people will remember it even if they don’t click it. It’s so cheap to get a Google ad campaign going.

Write about current searches and provide industry updates. You can interview industry leaders in your field and write about disaster situations that could have been avoided (no names of course)

If you are a successful recruiter and you own a domain name/blog called JanitorJobs.com, the world is your oyster and almost everyone you call will call you back. It’s true.

The good thing at the end of it, is that if and when you decide to get out of the business, you have an additional asset that may be of interest to a potential buyer. If the name is good and “out there” in cyberspace – it will be of interest. Writing on a regular basis will get your domain name “out there”.

If your average fee is 25k-50k, there is no way you could ever convince me that paying 75k for the perfect domain name is a bad investment. Of course you need the money. It helps.

A Domain Name Blog RSS I set up

Approved List or Preferred List – It’s Up To You!

by Terry Petra December 1st, 2004

Typically, all you have to do in order to qualify for the “Approved List” is sign a services agreement which is generally developed and controlled by the Human Resources department. These agreements tend to be one-sided and designed to handle a quantity approach to the hiring process (See TFL 10/03 “The Reality of Take It or Leave It Contracts”).

Read More

Give Them Permission To Say “No”

by Terry Petra May 1st, 2004

Suddenly, all communication is cut off. Phone calls and e-mails are not returned. You feel helpless and out of the loop as time continues to work against you.

Read More

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 I would like to thank PC Recruiter and Martin Snyder for being a site sponsor. For those of you who don’t know Martin, after your phone calls today, have a look.

• Paul Hawkinson At The Fordyce Forum 2007

• Your Audience – This article can easily be adapted to a recruiter’s website

• You be The Judge – I think it sets an expectation for substandard service. I also think that BountyJobs.com will become a household name in the business in the next few years if not sooner.

• A Recruiting Blog that generates placements and gets him calls from big time wireless companies all of the time.

• Successful Recruiting Firm builds a great brand online

• You make more placements with a researcher – These guys have great references

• Fordyce Forum 2008 – The Speaker List

I think video testimonials from your clients would be better.

Over on the ERE mother ship, I am thankful that Mo Edjlali took the time to critique this new Fordyce Letter website. Having said this, I whole heartedly disagree with almost everything he says.

We thought long and hard about making the Fordyce Letter recruiting archives available. We worried not so much about those who had no idea that there was even such a thing as the monthly newsletter but rather those who have been paying for it for many years. Would they be pissed off? Would they think that what we were doing was terrible? We did think for a long while about how it would all be taken in. I left a more detailed comment on his post

The idea behind the Fordyce Letter website was to cause awareness to what is considered by many to be the top source for information for third party recruiters. We needed to be able to show recruiters who had never even heard of the Fordyce Letter that not only was there a website with me writing on ( that’s another story) but much more importantly, there was a history of great information and a damn good history at that. We wanted to show this, and over time, the entire Fordyce Letter archive from as far back as we can go will be online. But again, if you want the new stuff every month you have to subscribe.

Stickiness is something that is very important to any website. If the site is not interesting, people don’t spend loads of time on it and over time, they stop coming. For now, I can safely say I am not sure how much more sticky a recruiting site can be. Have a look at the archives and do some searches for articles.

And Mo, one more thing, I am going to make it easy for you to learn more about the Fordyce Letter. I’ll make sure that you start getting the Fordyce Letter every month for the next year. It’s on us. Hopefully you can come to the Fordyce Forum in June this year and see what the Fordyce Letter is all about.

And now for a sticky video

Because of the economics of the way third party recruiters make their money, investing in domain names that speak exactly to the audience you recruit is something you need to spend some time thinking about.

Trust me, it’s a big mistake to pass up the opportunity to buy the perfect name (you know what that name is) because the purchase price is 5-30k. The truth is, the perfect name for your business should probably cost more than that but most people don’t have the ability to turn down an offer like that so…

How much money do you make every time you place a candidate? If you look at it from this perspective you can quickly see where I am coming from. If this domain name drives 10 placements over the next 4 years, a 35k price tag may not be so big after all. We are not even taking into account the brand awareness something like this would do for your business.

It’s this mentality that caused me to fork over an amount of money equal to 1.5 times a placement fee for www.SemiconductorJobs.com a long time ago. I set it up as a blog and wrote often about the kinds of searches I was doing and some of the searches my split partners were doing. I also linked to news that I was pretty sure the candidates I was looking for would be interested in. The investment was miniscule compared to the placement revenue that domain name was responsible for.

If a domain name that describes your search practice is available for purchase, (almost every domain name is for sale) and this domain name will cause little confusion and need very little clarification to the candidates you recruit, I suggest you look into buying it.

Now the domain name is yours right? You just paid 1.5 times your take on a placement for it. Lots of money, I know. Your spouse is pissed and thinks you’ve lost your mind. Your friends don’t understand. I know, I know – Pat yourself on the back because you did something very smart.

But… please make sure that the domain name you are buying will be put into action quickly and most importantly, make sure it is the right domain name.  If you want to contact me to discuss, please do so. I have good track record of buying and selling recruiting related domain names.

Next steps coming up tomorrow

June 4-6 is what you need to mark off on your calendar. Next thing is to call your travel agent and book your trip to Vegas. And in case you need a reason to go to Vegas other than to have a good time, you can come to The Fordyce Forum 2008.

This will be the 2^nd year that the third party recruiting industry can benefit from an amazing line up of experts who will be there to share their expertise on third party recruiting. Below is the list of speakers:

Jeff Skrentny

Jeff Allen

Doug Beabout

Mark Berger

Barbara Bruno

Stacy Ethun

Michael Gionta

Fran Goldstein

Amybeth Hale

Gail Kaplan

Jeff Kaye

Kim Knoll

Bob Marshall

Joe Pelayo

Frank Risalvato

Karen Russo

Dave Staats

Shally Steckerl

Brian Wright

Link To The Agenda – Learn About The Speakers

The Fordyce Forum is designed for both seasoned and up-and-coming recruiting professionals who want to network and learn from the best industry experts. In particular, it’s aimed at the following professionals:

• High performing search pros who want to fine tune their practice
• Above-average performers wanting to become high performers
• Practitioners who want to network with big billers
• Owners/managers wishing to optimize their management skills

See you there.

If things don’t work out in your niche, you can always go work for them

Some Nice Ideas – RecruiterLife.com

1. Bought Billing Power and Shut Up And Make More Money – Both by Bill Radin

2. Subscribed to the Fordyce Letter – Shameless plug but it’s true

3. Started buying recruiting related domain names in 1997 – I haven’t stopped

4. Started a blog for the semiconductor industry – made many placements from it.

5. Subscribed to zoominfo way back when it was called Eliyon

6. Tried my hardest always to understand what a candidate’s minimum acceptable starting salary was

7. Got through a Steve Finkel Video Series called High Profit Management – One thing jumped out which stuck with me a very long time and saved me boat loads of frustration- I’ll write a post about it soon

8. Tried never to sound like I had to make a deal while talking to a candidate – Yes, I certainly was in a position many times where I just had to make a deal.

9. Organized a real niche splits group called Splits.org – Not in service anymore though I still have many great relationships as a result.

10. Constantly spending money to create little recruiting software applications. – I never publicly launched any of them but it helped along a certain way of thinking about the recruiting process.

What are some of the best things you have ever done as a recruiter to help your business? Point form is ok. I know if you’re a recruiter, you’re probably busy.

From The Fordyce Letter Archive

Add One Placement Per Month

Without A Vision, Your Firm Will Perish

Are you going to The Fordyce Forum In Las Vegas this June?