Barbara Bruno
on Apr. 17, 2013
Dear Barb:
It’s getting harder and harder to fill our orders. I place in IT and we are only filling 30% of our orders. It makes me crazy that we’re leaving so much money on the table. Do I start a new niche or do I continue to struggle to find candidates that everyone seems to be having a hard time finding?
Frustrated in San Francisco
Barbara Bruno
on Apr. 10, 2013
Dear Barb:
Can you give me some idea of how to brand myself and my company? I saw you speak recently to a room full of owners. You asked us to tell you why we should use your firm. You told us we could not say anything that anyone else in the room could say. I found it almost crazy that none of us could think of an answer. If we as the owners don’t know why someone should use us, how are the people who work for us supposed to know the answer?
You said hiring authorities tell you that we all say we’re different and then when they ask us how, we all give the same answer. I think you’re 100% right, this has bothered me since I returned from the conference. We had a brainstorming session about this question and it did not go well. We were all saying the same things that I know our competitors say. I can’t remember some of the examples you gave us and would appreciate it you would refresh my memory.
Pat D.
Tulsa, OK
Debbie Fledderjohann
on Apr. 9, 2013
Companies across the United States want to streamline their processes. Flexibility, efficiency, and cost savings are necessary to survive in this new economy. Contract staffing allows companies to achieve those goals and become productive at the same time.
There are three pieces of good news here for recruiters. One is that the companies you are already working with for direct hire placements probably need contractors, and you already have those business relationships established.
The other piece of good news is that any recruiter, regardless of size, can add contract staffing to their business model if they use a full service back-office provider. The back-office should handle the financial, legal, and administrative tasks so you don’t have to deal with funding, contracts, time sheets, payroll, taxes, workers compensation, background checks or any other administrative issue.
Ken Forrester
on Jan. 22, 2013
![ken-forrester-large[1]](http://www.fordyceletter.com/media/2013/01/ken-forrester-large1-150x120.jpg)
Employers seldom complain about the services of headhunters, it’s the headhunters’ fee that has become their pain point.
A few months ago I was a presenting at a seminar to about 35 business owners and HR professionals. The topic of the presentation was “How to Recruit like a Headhunter” and during the presentation I made the statement “If you are not using headhunters as your primary recruitment weapon, then you are not hiring the best talent in-the-market”
One individual took offense to that particular statement and became very irate. He stood up, pointed his finger directly at me and said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about because we hired some pretty good people, and they are working out just fine. And we didn’t use headhunters.”
John Zappe
on Nov. 27, 2012
Ever wonder if you could be doing a better job at marketing yourself to new clients? Welcome to the club.
Marketing is by far the one area where recruiters say they could use more training. In a recent Top Echelon Network poll, 40% of the participating recruiters admitted they could use more training on “Marketing to prospective clients.” None of the other choices including the second-place answer “recruiting passive candidates” even came close.
“Recruiters can’t make placements unless they have job orders, and they can’t get job orders unless they have clients to give them those job orders,” says Mark Demaree, president of Top Echelon Network. “With that in mind, the results of this poll aren’t that surprising.
“Recruiters know they have to get in front of more prospective clients, and they also know they have to get better at marketing to such prospects. I’d be willing to bet that just about all recruiters believe they need to improve their marketing skills in regards to landing new clients and securing more job orders.”
Once they do land those job orders, then they have to fill them in order to get paid. As keen as the competition is, it’s not surprising that 26.2% of the recruiters who took the poll said they could use more training in connecting with passive candidates. Close behind was “Sourcing candidates” at 20%.
“Negotiating with clients” at 9.2%, was fourth, while “closing candidates” garnered just 1.5% of the vote.
Tim Tolan
on Aug. 17, 2012
Marketing means many things to many professionals in our industry.
If your idea of marketing only includes cold calling into companies in search of your next assignment I think you may be missing lots of opportunities to really articulate your value equation to the markets you serve. I’m confident there are lots of search professionals who track telephone metrics to determine their activity, which can be a predictor of future billings. In fact, some of the most successful people I’ve met have demonstrated the direct correlation of how productive telephone metrics convert to better billing results in their own firms.
While I “get that” I think marketing in our business is much more than pure phone time. I believe that if the main yardstick for measuring success is the “number of dials” and “connect time” with the economic buyers of your services, you may be defining yourself as a transactional producer. Don’t get me wrong — for many in our industry that’s not a bad thing. It’s just not the way I want to build my practice.
Matt Lowney
on Jul. 31, 2012
Over the last several years I’ve sat through no less than 100 staffing agency “pitches” in person or over the phone. At this point these meetings have begun to all sound very similar, so I’ll bucket agency sales pitches in to these three areas.
“We’re Different.” Almost every agency says they have a special/unique process for reviewing resumes, sourcing candidates, and access to candidates that sets them apart from their competitors. From my experience I’ve not really seen the impact of their “unique” process in the candidates they’ve submitted. Additionally, most agencies don’t appear to have a thorough understanding of their competition. At some point in almost every vendor meeting someone says that they don’t push paper like “everyone else.” I would encourage vendors to have a much more in-depth understanding of the competitive landscape before they make such broad sweeping indictments of their competitors.
Joanie Ruge
on May 10, 2012
With job growth as a central theme for presidential candidate hopefuls, there is no shortage of employment figures and projections circulating in the media. Yet with all the skillful posturing of our political newsmakers, it remains difficult to gain a clear, unbiased picture of what is really happening in the job market.
With those of us in the employment field sometimes baffled by the fog machines, imagine how most hiring managers feel.
Professional recruiters serve as a primary resource for hiring managers on job market intelligence, which poses a unique opportunity for a recruiter in this environment: That is to fill a void for sound advice, and in turn begin to build your own personal brand as an expert in employment trends. Just as with global brands, a successful personal brand will allow you to command greater notoriety, margins and new business. In other words, beat the competition!
An Arsenal of Labor Market Knowledge
A great way to get started is with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS offers a wealth of information broken down by various industries, geography, and other demographics. The real nuggets of gold are in the sub-trends. For example, most people recall an overall unemployment figure of about 8%, and subsequently assume great talent is waiting in the wings to fill their open positions quickly, and for deal-of-a-price. The reality is that unemployment among college graduates is 4.3%, and depending upon the skill set and market in which you are trying to fill a job, a talent search may take just as long, or be just as competitive as ever.
Many more trends are in play related to women in the workplace, recent college graduates, and Baby Boomers — each with their own unique set of skills, expectations and workplace requirements. Recruiters who package current statistics from BLS and other reliable third-party sources along with your own geographical or industry-specific insights create a powerful platform for thought leadership.
Boosting Your Bottom Line
Starting your own personal blog or Facebook page, contributing to a local magazine or newsletter, and participating in speaking engagements are all great ways to establish credibility, and begin to build your personal brand awareness. Most important, by packaging timely, and relevant employment market advice you can more credibly manage client expectations, protect your margins, and increase client retention and referrals.
Imagine participating in a call to discuss a host of IT positions required, armed with current data on which IT jobs are in most demand, compensation, and other trends specific to your market. How about going into the meeting with the client who never seems to keep a new hire on board for more than six months, with your whitepaper on best practices in on-boarding and retention? Or sharing survey results on the ideal recruitment cycle length with the client who insists on seven screening interviews before the “real” interview?
All of these elements contribute to how efficiently and successfully you can recruit and place qualified candidates, earn referrals from satisfied customers and protect margins — thanks to on-time, on-budget delivery against a set of realistic expectations.
Researching, packaging and delivering your personal knowledge on employment trends can create a powerful personal brand that will serve you well throughout your career and improve your bottom line. It will also help boost the overall recruitment industry’s reputation for providing thoughtful, value-added services to the businesses we support.
Joanie Ruge will keynote the 2012 Fordyce Forum coming up June 7th and 8th in Dallas. Her topic is “Making Sense of the Employment Market,” and what she thinks you should be doing about it in your own recruiting practice.
Greg Doersching
on Dec. 6, 2011
For 20 years now I’ve been a recruiter, trainer, coach, and mentor. In that time I have watched and listened to literally hundreds of recruiters try to explain to a potential customer why they should work with their firm over the dozens of others they get calls from every month. In all that time I’ve come to discover that we (recruiters) do an absolutely horrible job of differentiating ourselves from one another. Everyone wants to talk about the exact same things:
“I’ve been in business for X years.”
“We specialize exclusively in this area (almost always what the client says they need).”
“I’d be happy to offer (insert the name of your best customer here) as a reference.”
“We’re located here in (insert random city/ST) so we do a much better job of selling the community.”
And the piece-de-resistance, “I’m able to find candidates you won’t have access to without me.”
The words may come out differently from recruiter to recruiter, but the message is almost always the same. This has to change. If you want to start to capture the market share and clients you desire, start with a whole new approach to what you “sell” your potential customers.
Barbara Bruno
on Nov. 30, 2011
Dear Barb:
Thank you for accepting my invitation to connect on LinkedIn. Perhaps you’d be open to offering some suggestions as to the most effective ways to get decision makers (Director, VP and C-Suite executives) on the phone. Once I speak with them in real time, I have no problems conducting sales presentations and closing them on using my recruiting services. After being in outside (medical device) sales for many years, I still struggle with getting past their administrative assistants, which is curious, since I never had any problems, previously.
Can you please help? Thank you for your time and kind attention.
Robin S. Newhall, CA
For four decades running, The Fordyce Letter has brought street-smart knowledge and tell-it-like-it-is opinions to recruiters in the know.
Get The Fordyce Letter in print and you'll get:
Welcome to The Fordyce Letter: