Maureen Sharib
on Nov. 16, 2010
I’m always hearing recruiters say they want to be more helpful to candidates.
I wonder. I wrote the following with the idea that it might help some express some of their challenges through a third-party voice.
I’m a phone sourcer. That means I am paid to find people who hold specific titles or who are doing specific job functions inside (usually) specific companies.
I’ve been doing this a long time.
There are a few things that spell disaster for you as a job seeker.
Amybeth Hale
on Sep. 2, 2010
Over on TechCrunch late last week, the co-founder and CEO of voice-application startup SayNow, Nikhyl Singhal
, wrote a very interesting post titled Phone Numbers Are Dead, They Just Don’t Know It Yet. The idea behind the post is that with the development of resources like Skype and Google Voice, telephone numbers are dying a slow death. With the growing mainstream acceptance of online communication tools, will we be facing a time in the not-so-distant future where telephone numbers will be obsolete? There is a very real possibility of this. Don’t believe it? Check out some of the main reasons Singhal cites to qualify this theory:
Robin Gillman
on Aug. 16, 2010
Evolution of Cold Calling & Recruiting
Cold calling came about as a way to find and close new clients. Given leads, a “real” salesperson needed to be able to call on prospective customers to sell a product or service. These prospective customers were not expecting the call. Hence, the term “cold call” ensued. For a powerful depiction of cold calling, watch the 1992 movie Glengarry Glen Ross.
During the early days of recruiting, technology was nonexistent. There were no faxes, computers, databases, Internet, social networking, applicant tracking systems (ATS), webcamming and mobile and cloud technology. The only tools were the Rolodex, file cabinet, telephone, physical transportation and advertising (newspaper, TV, radio). Recruiters developed leads through incoming resumes from advertising, referrals and networking at job fairs, user groups, and other venues. Many recruiters were already cold calling clients. When they could not find candidates through the usual methods, they easily turned to cold calling into companies to find candidates.
The Best Choice
Yesterday’s scenario was much different. There was good reason to cold call. Resumes were limited and mail could be slow. Networking and searching was cumbersome and often had to be done in person. Advertising was expensive and did not always result in the best matches possible. Being able to call into a company and pull out a targeted passive candidate saved time and money and often resulted in superior matches.
To be truly effective in today’s sophisticated market, one needs to be able to determine if cold calling is the best choice. Asking and answering the following five questions have helped me to determine whether or not to cold call.
Matt McMahon
on Jul. 30, 2010
When I started in search in 1998, conventional wisdom said that if you were not on the phone, you were not working. In fact, two of the firms for whom I have worked had call tracking software built into the phone system. Every night, the head of the office would send out a report to the entire company detailing how many calls each recruiter made and how much time they spent on the phone. It was implied that recruiters who spent time sending e-mails and performing internet research did so because they lacked the spine to make cold calls. This attitude became deeply ingrained in me.
However, times change and technology changes behavior. Many people today are not likely to answer the phone if they do not recognize the number on the caller ID and even less likely if the caller ID is blocked. A few candidates in their twenties and thirties who work at big companies have confessed to me that they frequently go a week without checking voicemail. They feel that if information is important, it will arrive via e-mail.
Robin Eads
on Jul. 8, 2010
Now that we’ve discussed how to go about cold calling candidates, let’s rewind just a bit and discuss cold calling for business. Obviously without business, you’d have no reason to cold call candidates! A lot of the same principles apply in both types of cold calling, so why not put your skills to work on both sides of the desk? I realize that not all third party recruiters handle business development but a well-rounded recruiter should definitely be capable of doing so. The most successful recruiters are those that control both ends of the placement equation, thus resulting in more earned fees.
Smart recruiters will seek relationships with clients where they can have direct interaction with hiring managers, allowing them to gain a deeper understanding of the client’s needs and environment beyond just a job req. Instead of competing with hundreds of vendors on VMS requisitions, targeting smaller environments where these relationships can be built is a great way to position yourself for long term success. While I certainly would never discourage big business, relationships make the best placements. Period.
That being said, what’s the best way to go about cold calling for business? The same way you would if you were looking for a candidate. Research!
Robin Eads
on May 28, 2010
Cold Calling From Scratch
So you like the idea of finding the candidate you need through cold calling — but what happens when you don’t have a starting point for your cold call?
Let’s say that you’re recruiting for a job within an industry or location that isn’t familiar to you. In this situation, you’re competing against other recruiters that have an advantage. They know the job, the industry, the location and the people. What can you do when you’re at this kind of disadvantage to give yourself a running chance? Cold call. Even with all of this information, your competition is less likely to use the cold call to source.
Where do I start?
As always, research is the starting point for any cold calling expedition.
LinkedIn is a great source of information and can help you identify some targets. Begin by searching for companies within a 50 mile radius of where your client is located. You can sort by industry and even company size if those are important factors in your particular search. Using these filters may exclude some improperly categorized (but usable) results, so your mileage may vary. Experiment with different variables to see if it nets any different results. Of course, don’t just rely upon LinkedIn. Spoke, ZoomInfo, Manta and other information aggregates are also rich sources of information. In addition, you can research potential target companies through local business directories such as offered through a local Chamber of Commerce chapter.
In addition to researching companies, you can research potential groups or organizations that may help lead you to your candidate. This approach is a bit more complex and long term and probably best suited for developing a talent pool, not a quick hire. If you decide to join a group or organization, don’t be the pink elephant in the room. Participate and engage with the members and stick to the content of the group. Establish trust and get to know the group members before plowing into your sales pitch that they aren’t ready to hear.
Remember, recruiting isn’t just a strategy, it’s an art. You must have strong social ability, strong search ability and strong sensibility – or this will just be a miserable waste of time. However, if you cultivate your groups and relationships properly, they can be a valuable source of talent.
Ok, I’ve done my research. What’s next?
elaine.rigoli
on May 26, 2010
The Fordyce Letter recently chatted with Tory Johnson about her Spark & Hustle conference, scheduled for July 29-31 in Atlanta.
As the CEO of Women For Hire and Workplace Contributor on ABC’s Good Morning America, she has a significant following among career management professionals. She is offering Fordyce Letter readers who may need help turning their ideas into cash a discount to attend (use code FORDYCE to save $200; leave a note that you’ve registered so she can flag it for her staff and she can include you in the after-hours get-togethers).
Tell me more about the agenda and “inner circle” of experts. Also, is this designed mostly for female business owners?
While the contents of the three-day conference would apply equally to men and women, our market is primarily women. Don’t get me wrong, we love men — and they’re welcome to register to attend — but truthfully it’s largely a women’s event by default!
The core focus of the agenda is turning passion and potential into PROFIT. The current and aspiring small business owners and solopreneurs I meet are generally really good at what they do. Where they fall short is how to SELL their services. How to PROMOTE their businesses. How to EXPAND their platforms. This isn’t an event to come discover your passion. Our attendees will arrive knowing exactly what their passion is—that is their SPARK. And they’ll leave having gained the tools and tactics for turning that passion to profit—that’s the HUSTLE part! It’s all about making money right now.
Readers of The Fordyce Letter are motivated by becoming or maintaining their status as “Big Billers”; along those lines, what tactics do you teach at these events to MAKE MONEY NOW?
That’s my kind of crowd!
In no particular order, attendees will learn how to build their digital identities, how to overcome sales objections, how to write compelling copy that sells without being sleazy, how to generate media coverage that’s for profit not just for vanity, how to form complementary alliances, how to generate multiple revenue streams to enhance the core business, and so much more. All of these things can be put to work Monday morning after the event.
Robin Eads
on May 20, 2010
Editor’s note: This is Part 1 of a multi-part, weekly series on cold calling. Look for Part 2 next week.
Even if the economy isn’t in turmoil, gaining new business has always been a tricky task in the recruiting industry.
Some say it’s a numbers game. For example: make 100 calls to submit 10 candidates to schedule four interviews to get two hires.
We can argue the stats, but this line of thinking and measurement is perpetuated among recruiting management like a plague.
I can remember a time when my recruiting performance was measured by phone time. That’s right; my employer at the time actually tracked the amount of time we spent on the phone during the day. What this led to, of course, were recruiters and account managers trying to “cheat” to meet management’s expectations.
I’ve got news for you: recruiting isn’t about numbers. It’s about skill. You want more placements? You want to earn more money? You want the respect of your clients? Then you need to master the art of cold calling.
This is a phrase that makes some recruiters cringe. They perceive cold calling as pushy and invasive.
elaine.rigoli
on Apr. 27, 2010
Jim Fowler, founder and CEO of the online business directory Jigsaw, chatted with us following last week’s news of the $142 million proposed merger with Salesforce.com.
Jigsaw, best known in the recruiting community for helping with passive candidate searches, will pretty much stay the same.
“Salesforce recognizes that recruiters have played a huge and key role in crowdsourcing the Jigsaw database and don’t plan to change anything that is working!” he says.
Fowler says there are no bundle plans in the works yet, the Jigsaw brand and model will stay around after the merger, and Jigsaw will operate as a separate business unit.
It’s the “need for raw business card data” that enables recruiters to do a very specific title search.
“Jigsaw has well over one million unique titles. Many recruiters are used to working with data sets where there are a very small amount of ‘normalized’ titles. Being able to search by a very specific key word in a title can help narrow a search very quickly, which makes a search far more efficient,” he says.
“Having an email and a direct dial phone number is invaluable when recruiting a passive candidate. Another way Jigsaw can help is by setting a saved search on companies and seeing which employees are added and ‘graveyarded.’ Understanding the ebb and flow of employees from a given target company is critical information that many recruiters don’t take advantage of on Jigsaw,” he notes.
The Jigsaw website claims that 75,000 in-house and independent recruiters use its service each month, but the company says third-party recruiters likely account for “well over 50%,” with “certainly more” interest among independents than in-house recruiters.
Yet for those recruiters who do not need sourcing help, Fowler suggests that there is “much more” to a search than just sourcing, since “every recruiter needs to know who gets added and subtracted to a target company.”
Jigsaw, which has dealt with privacy criticisms over the years, “decided to change our privacy model because we felt it was the right thing to do,” he says.
“Even though we weren’t legally compelled to offer an opt-out model, we decided to do it so that the market would recognize Jigsaw as having the most progressive privacy policy in existence [as a BtoB data company]. We’re proud of these changes and hope the market understands that Jigsaw sets the standard in this arena,” adds Fowler.
Under the new privacy model, Jigsaw notifies by email every person who gets added to its database. The email explains what Jigsaw is and gives them a chance to remove themselves from the database.
“Interestingly, most choose not to do this because Jigsaw — alone among data companies — allows anyone to set preferences and provide instructions on their business card. These instructions tell salespeople, marketers, recruiters, etc. how to communicate with them. These instructions save EVERYONE time,” says Fowler.
The old system gave financial incentives to upload contacts, but Fowler explains that the cash-incentive system was never a big part of its model, nor was it very effective. A tiny percentage of members participated in this program, so it was killed after about a year.
“Many businesses, and especially recruiters, need a constant source of fresh, accurate data to run their businesses. If you think about how much time a salesperson or a recruiter spends just trying to figure out the right people to contact, it can get staggering. The basic Jigsaw model is that for every record a member adds, updates, or graveyards, he or she gets a record in return,” he says.
“It is far more efficient to do bit of work on Jigsaw to get your points than to blindly cold-call a target organization. Our community continues to grow at a very rapid pace,” he adds.
elaine.rigoli
on Dec. 3, 2009
UPDATE: Here is the video recap of Neil’s latest episode about cold calling and territory management. Enjoy!
Although cold-calling and territory management remain popular topics, the real reason one feels the need to “manage” their territory is because, well, the territory is too big!
When you have too much to focus on, the end result is that little gets done with any one prospect, according to Neil Lebovits, who returns to Fordyce TV on Tuesday, December 8. In his next live appearance, he will cover one of his best-kept secrets.
“Dare I say, the concept might be the most responsible for landing me on the global executive team of the world’s largest staffing firm,” he says.
“Once I learned and mastered this, I was not only able to ‘kill it’ on my desk, but I enabled countless recruiters and sales reps to literally double their business,” he adds.
Join us at 2pm Eastern this coming Tuesday to hear Neil’s secrets to landing the big accounts and to landing even more in 2010. Right at 2pm, log on to www.fordyceletter.com and click the small TV box to enjoy the show.
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