Friday’s latest jobs report shows the July unemployment at 9.4%, down from 9.5% in June. American employers cut just 247,000 jobs, the fewest in a year.

This data also comes on the heels of the release of the 2009 Recruiter Economic Survey by Sendouts, the online recruitment software and ATS company.

Here are a few significant findings from the Sendouts survey:

• Recruiting professionals handling one-to-three jobs a time has jumped from 6% to 44%.
• Recruiters having only one-to-three interviews per month has risen from 26% to 55%.
• The average number of those making only one placement each month increased from 24% to 53%.
• Average annual revenue is more modest, with fewer multi-million dollar revenues reported (check out questions 10 and 11 to see how you stack up!).
• Out of the survey respondents, 70% noted they reduced expenses and operating costs with only 6% increasing staff during this period.

The full list of questions and answers offer a fascinating glimpse into the REAL economic recovery, so be sure to check out the full report.

As a bonus for long-time Barb Bruno fans, you can hear her audio commentary as well.

She points out that businesses only start looking at reducing costs and streamlining operations after an economic situation occurs. She notes that some businesses only look at internal processes when revenues slow, when they should constantly look at ways to increase efficiency,  regardless of the economic situation.

We must be in survival mode, each and every day — focusing our time and energy on building new relationships with clients and candidates, working on deals that are closest to the money, and working with peak performers in your industry will keep your desk in motion and your boss off your back.

Here are five tips to surviving in a tight market:

1. Be selfish with your time. Professional, but selfish. Protect your Platinum Six! Typically they are 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. However, many recruiters are coming in earlier and/or staying later to reach their clients, candidates, and professional goals. Whatever your daily work schedule, be certain to protect your Platinum Six and stay on the phone. Utilize your time in the office to accomplish what you have planned. Work in blocks of time throughout each day to get the most out of each day. Make one more call. Just before lunch, and again at the end of the day, make just one more call. Remember, there are only 20 to 22 business days each month, and you only have time and your reputation in this business. Protect both.
2. Every Send Out counts. Regardless of the outcome, getting motivated candidates in front of decision-makers is the only way to succeed in our business. Treat every candidate with respect and professionalism; never be afraid to ask the tough question, as you will be representing them in your marketplace. The definition of a tough question is any question that you are hesitant to hear the answer to. Don’t interrogate, just ask! Being thorough early saves a lot of time and money throughout the placement process. Your matching skills play a critical role in getting more Send Outs. Capture all of your data into your database, and use your intelligence to your benefit by recalling candidates and situations that fit now from former conversations. An average of three Send Outs a week will put you in a leader role within your office or network.
3. Plan effectively. Without a track to run on, it’s very easy to get off track. Take planning time seriously. Either before you leave your office or before you start making calls early in the morning, take 30 to 60 minutes to set up your plan; do not use a tactical list but a comprehensive and strategic plan to attack your niche market. After over 100 recruiter-office visits in the past five years, the top performers take planning very seriously. In fact, some million-dollar producers take up to two hours a day to plan. An effective plan that is executed will take you places that you’ve never been.
4. Do your homework. In today’s recruiting world, you do not want to become obsolete; you want to remain relevant. Know what your organization offers; use your website as a differentiation tool and share your portfolio of solutions with every client and candidate; read today’s headlines and new articles around the industry that you serve; and become an industry insider. The more you are entrenched in your vertical, the more money you will make. You will become the “go-to” person in that marketplace, and referrals to similar clients and candidates will follow.
5. Make more calls. Work both harder and smarter each day. Working smarter is having a solid plan in place, executing that plan, being able to think on your feet, possessing solid matching skills, and sharing pertinent information at the right times. Working harder is making more calls today than you did yesterday. Focusing and staying on the phone. No making excuses for a lack of performance, rather making solid efforts to move the ball forward today. Not being afraid to come in early, get on the phone quicker, make the next call faster, and stay later. Your work ethic in this economy will differentiate you.

Let’s all achieve our goals in 2009! Keep up your focus and discipline and only good things will happen. Treat people how they want to be treated, and all the chips will fall into place. Make today great!

I write for the masses, and I back up what I write with experience in our industry through two recessions, and a war.

• First Law: There is nothing really new under the sun in our business. Get that into your heads, everyone. Don’t believe it when you hear how the Internet and technology have changed everything, or how certain websites are a requirement for success today, or that there are new techniques for getting employers to return calls, or this and that…ad nauseum. The basic principles of our business, like human nature itself, do not change, ever. In fact, almost everything taught today by top trainers was created by and taught first by Lou Scott at MRI back in the early 1970s. In our entire industry, all roads lead back to Lou, so don’t go around believing this or that guru has all the answers when most never even knew the questions until Lou first asked them 35 years ago.

• Second Law: If you do not cold call…you shall fail. Whether the economy is booming or busting, if you are not on the phone each and every day cold calling business leaders and selling your services to people who have never heard of you, you have no chance for long-term success. I have seen one star after another fall over the past 25 years and it all boiled down to this: they stopped cold calling every day. Most got comfortable with their niche, within which they were viewed as the “go to” specialists. That is always good…for a time. Then, as it always does eventually, the market changed, and it was too uncomfortable for them to get back to “in the trenches” cold calling. And let’s not call something what it isn’t. In business, when you call someone for the first time and they are not expecting your call, it’s a “cold call,” not a “marketing call.”
• Third Law: Companies and candidates who use us are not “clients.” The majority want nothing to do with us until they need us. To most, we are a necessary evil to help fill a need or a convenient way to escape a bad employment situation. In over 25 years, I have spoken with only ONE business leader who told me he enjoys paying me fees, and he told me that was because he would lose his recruiting budget if he didn’t burn it up (but he also liked me personally). I have been privileged to build some strong personal relationships with a few candidates, but I am under no illusions. It is a business relationship first, in their eyes and mine, and shall always remain that way. You can be extra nice to almost all who you deal with, and you still are only going to gain true friendship from a very small number of people. That’s mostly because sooner or later, you will need to bring these people to decisions in your timeframe which they are going to want to make in theirs, which brings me to the next law.
• Fourth Law: Your job is to get decisions, up or down, and as early as possible. And “as early as possible” is always by the completion of the first face-to-face interview. Time kills deals in good economies, and is murderous in bad ones. Both interviewer and candidate know in their gut after a first meeting whether or not they are right for each other…in exactly the same manner as how at the conclusion of a first date, two people know whether or not they want to date each other again. Obtain one of three outcomes, and never settle for anything else: an offer; a decision not to go further, and why; or a next step on the calendar, with no “reconfirms.” To achieve decisions, develop the skill of leading people to conclusions without ruffling their feathers. Unfortunately, that skill only comes about after ruffling the feathers of a lot of people…which is one reason why most people do not last a full year in this business.
• Fifth Law: Quotas mean something…goals are meaningless. Yes, that is blasphemy to the “rah rah!” goal-setting crowd. After all…isn’t sales all about setting goals and then going about achieving them? Yes…and no. Unfortunately, our business is so tough to learn and to execute that unless there is a hammer hanging over a recruiter’s head, he/she rarely achieves goals. A quota needs to be set where if it isn’t achieved, consequences follow. I have seen firm after firm fold because of this same mistake: “goals” instead of “quotas.” For the solo practitioner, the consequences today of not meeting quotas are mortgage foreclosure. That should be motivation enough for them.
• Sixth Law: Job orders without sendouts are worthless. Never work any job order unless you have a firm commitment from the hiring company not to hire anyone until after they have interviewed your candidates. If the company won’t give you that commitment, you have a job “lead,” not a job order.
• Seventh Law: Recruiting is easy…placing is hard. There is always so much buzz about how to recruit people. Recruiting is the easiest part of our business. When you approach someone for the first time, most are hoping to be recruited. What they do not want is to be asked to interview, hire, and pay us fees. That’s why I always teach mastery of gaining sendouts as more important than mastery of recruiting people, although both are important in the long run. Sendouts are especially critical in a bad economy.

There are additional laws to our business, but these seven are the most important in my book, and especially for surviving tough economic conditions. Anyone who sticks to the above will survive, and possibly thrive, today…and tomorrow.

Unless you are in the retained search business where you can get paid something even if you produce zero candidates for a client, making money in this business all boils down to putting human beings who are either looking for or are open to new employment in front of other human beings who have the power to hire them. Sendouts.

If you cannot generate sendouts, you cannot succeed in our business. It’s as simple as that. In fact, that applies also to the retained search people because (sensible) clients may pay a non-productive retained recruiter one time, but they will never pay him twice.

Adding It Up

We all know how “the numbers” can help us see how we are doing, and can predict with fair accuracy how our income is going to be in the near future. There are many ratios and “metrics” (I hate that term) for monitoring desk level activity, but I really only pay attention to two numbers: the number of presentations to a hiring authority a recruiter makes, and the number of first time sendouts which resulted.

Everything you need to know can be derived from those two numbers. I have managed offices of up to 12 (very) productive desks, and I train offices today which are very successful, but I have never really paid much attention to all that mathematical mumbo-jumbo that the industry “experts” say I need to carefully pay attention to as a manager. (One of the reasons I remain in this business is I am lousy in math.)

I simply know that if enough sendouts are arranged, hires result (even with incompetent recruiters). The surest way to predict a slump is seeing a drop in the number of first-time sendouts a recruiter produces.

Many recruiters would be very happy to make two placements per month. Even with small fees of 12K-20K, most people can live fairly well on that kind of production. If you are even marginally skilled and desire two placements per month…guaranteed…generate just one first-time sendout per day. That’s right…just one…five per week…20 per month…and that applies no matter what the economy is doing.

How do I know that with such certainty? Because I have been doing this business for 25 years and have trained hundreds of recruiters to live by that “metric” (that word again), and all who generate one first-time sendout per day make two placements per month, and that applies also to today’s economy.

Getting On the Phone

How do you produce one sendout per day? Simple: get on the phone and make presentation calls. Plan for making 100 presentation calls per day and somewhere in those calls will be that one sendout, maybe two. (Who knows, if you are lucky, you may get that daily sendout before noon and then you can goof off the remainder of the day).

Unfortunately, presentation calls are the hard part that unsuccessful people won’t do, always looking for the sendouts, but without the cold calls. In my book, there’s nothing that will get those folks productive.