How to Generate Canidates for Free!
When I first started writing this blog I had a plan to be on the first page of Google for the term Recruitment Tips, as time went on I stopped checking, partly because my focus had changed and I had turned into a blogger, scary as it may sound.
What has pleased me is that all the work I put into making Recruitment Views successful for this term, has paid off, and now I am at number one position on Google.co.uk and google.com for recruitment tips and would you believe recruitment blog.
Although I may be at number one that could and will probably change, as other sites will continue to try to compete using various SEO tricks, but none the less it certainly made me feel chuffed with myself.
What has surprised me is how few recruitment companies have taken on blogging to generate quality candidates for free, even though I have mentioned it a few times in the past.
To give you an example of how it can work, a couple of years back I was involved in finding welders. Although this was an industry that didn’t appeal to me I was able to generate candidates via Google Adwords, which I wrote about here. What I have not mentioned until now is that I set up another blog at the same time as this site purely for finding welders.
Although I hardly write on International Welder, it generates welding candidates every single day for Indeed.
So if it is something you want to try then I will give you a few of my tips.
- Get a domain that represents the keyword that a candidate would hunt for, such as welding jobs NB anything with jobs in the domain will probably have gone, so look at alternatives i.e. international-welder.
- Get a co.uk domain if you are recruiting in the UK and use a UK hosting company, I used Fasthosts.
- Optimise your site for google, ie include a site map
- Get quality links to your site, maybe from Recruitment Views, just ask.
- Update your site on a regular basis
- Use wordpress as it does most of what you need with some excellent plugins making the process painless.
- Get free advice using Aaron Wall’s SEO Book
- Get someone to do it for you and contact Adam Taylor from Brand Attention, whom I can recommend as he has worked with a few recruitment companies to date.
And if you still don’t believe me Andy Headworth is so convinced at Sirona they offer a jobinablog as a package!
I hope this helps but if you want to know more feel free to contact me direct.
Getting past the Gate keeper
Now I am assuming anyone who reads my blog also reads Louise’s so this post I suppose is for everyone else 
Something I have talked about a lot is the generation of new business, probably because it was something I have gained a reputation for. You can read some of my tactics here. What I didn’t go into great detail was how to get past the Gate keeper, maybe because I have been doing this for so long I just never saw it as an issue, mind you there is still the odd contact I haven’t spoken to.
The reason why most people find this so difficult is because the client gets inundated with calls, which brings me to an excellent post from Louise, where we get a unique insite on how our clients see us, a must read.
So how do we get past the Gate Keeper, well Emma gives us a few clues and for me it was simple “be professional, make each call unique and never give up” this is the same technique I used to get on to PSL’s.
OK that may be over simplifying, but all I am saying is before each call remember that the client has been called 32 times today why should they speak to you!
Oh and one important fact always smile, they can tell and as Emma puts it “people buy from people”
Interview Tips
Today I was contacted by HR World to see if I wanted to give my readers a heads up on a cheat sheet, they had compiled for interviewers and interviewees.
After popping over I found it was not so much a cheat sheet but a link to other resources, so at first I thought it was a bit of a cheat itself!
After following the links I did feel that the resource was superb and well researched, both for candidate and consultant. It was not just a list of typical questions but industry specific, with many tips on styles of interviews such as group interviews and Panels etc.
Although American biased most of the tips would sit comfortably in the UK, I particularly liked the illegal interview questions from USAToday.
Recruitment Companies Beware
Many of us Recruitment Bloggers and myself included, have talked a lot about the benefits of having a blog as part of the marketing mix, to gain quality candidates and generally improve ones perception within the market place.
What has disappointed me is that so few have taken up this option, how many times do we need to advise recruitment consultancies this is the way forward. In the case of the UK maybe we are just too scared to let anyone know what we are up to; as commented by Mary in a recent post "Are we better recruiters than the Americans".
What has made me revisit this subject is I came across a very interesting blog from Australia called Freelanceswitch, as the name implies it is a blog for freelancers.
While I was reading through their posts, I couldn’t help feel that if they wanted to enter the recruitment industry, they would succeed, because if I was looking for a job I know I would feel comfortable using them. Why? well its obvious really their, their blog transmits an image of an experienced team who understand their market, so who better to ask for help when looking for that next career move!
As it turns out it is something they are considering, as they will be adding a jobs board to their site, but seriously if they decided to go into recruitment I would certainly be worried.
Although it is early days for them I will tip this company to do well, and I will be watching them closely here at recruitment views and maybe the odd consultancy could learn something from them.
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Networking for the Introverted Recruitment Consultant
When it comes to recruitment consultants, few of us are introverted but I still remember the days when I was too scared to pick up a phone, mind you I still have days like that now
In many ways my shyness has always helped when it came to getting information out of clients and candidates, as they never felt threatened. What is important to know is you can overcome this as Rod points out in The Business Pundit where he has covered 8 points, which helped him deal with his poor networking skills due to being introverted.
- Networking is an investment, not a nuisance.
- At first, you have to kiss a lot of frogs.
- Don’t spend too much time on it.
- Do cool things.
- Invite people to lunch.
- Go regularly to things you like.
- Analyse your results.
- Find the key nodes in the network.
- Don’t network just for the sake of networking.
All the above points are excellent but I wanted to mention two things that had a fundamental effect on me, because when I started out I was also very shy and introverted, yes I know it is hard to believe!
Firstly I recommend you read a book called “how to make friends and influence people” by Dale Carnegie. Out of all the self-help books I have read this has had the most influence, and is the only one I can still remember 20 years on.
Secondly be passionate in everything you do, you do not have to be an expert but show a genuine interest. I learnt early on in my career that not being able to converse in football put me at a fundamental disadvantage, when it came to conversing with my peers, I also found it was a great opening conversation with strangers, Athletics never had the same effect.
Networking is never easy no matter if you are introverted or not, but these tips from Rod should make it a less painful experience.
To read more on Rods post follow this link
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Free Recruitment Tips or How to work less earn more
Yesterday I came across an excellent free training resource for recruitment consultants. It is a series of podcasts on Futura’s website by Warren Kemp of recruitment matters.
I have listened to the first few and will certainly recommend them. The training is based on headhunting or execuive search, but to be honest if you are in contingency recruitment you really need to start looking at headhunting techniques, certainley if you are in an industry where there is a lack of quality candidates.
Although the podcasts are free do not treat them lightly as Warren normally charges for this trainning and his "Golden Question" is certainly worth taking down, you can certainly teach this old dog a few new recruiting tips!
Oh and John if you spot this post I love the new Futura site
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How I became a Top Biller
After my last post and the help I was able to give to Marisa, I thought it would make sense to write a post on how I became a Top Biller, I suppose taking a leaf out of Bill Vicks books or should I say pod!!
Before I start I would like to say Bill’s One Minute Interviews, really does give an insight into what makes a top Biller and certainly will help you grow your business, you can either listen to them on his website at Xtremerecruiting, their comments certainly reflect mine.
Although it has been a number of years since I was recruiter, I always generated revenue as a manager and the principles have not really changed, whereas the technology has.
When I started out in Recruitment I was offered a job with a large company called Austin Benn, they had offices all over England, the funny thing is that if I had seen the job advert for the role I would never had applied. If I remember rightly it was something like, are you dynamic, hard working, want to be the best etc and at the time I did not think of myself like that, to be honest I was quite shy.
Why I was offered the Job I will never know, I will always remember walking in with patent shoes a cheap suit and I was completely naive. What made it even more unbelievable was the company was made up of aggressive young males, a little like the video from computer people, on top of this they were a hire and fire company and if you didn’t perform Keith Austin had no hesitation to fire you.
So feeling a little out of my depth I started with the company and just got my head down, when I looked up I found myself at the top of the league table, I couldn’t believe it really. So how did I beat these young aggressive dynamic colleagues I was up against, not only one month but consistently.
Well the answer isn’t to complicated, just hard work and making as many calls as possible in a working day, the funny thing is by making so many calls you can really hone your skills to the point you can achieve the same revenue from less calls.
Obviously there was a lot of training that helped me succeed on top of this, I do not want to go into every aspect here but what I thought would help is to mention the key points I focused on, which I felt made the difference
They are:
1) Continually be on the phone
2) Treat every client and candidates as if there were Royalty (take their call, would be a good start here!)
3) Never give up, you will need to have skin of a Rhino at times as this is a sales role.
4) One phrase worked wonders for me “why should some one come to work for you?” the information I gained here often made the difference.
5) Leave no stone unturned when it comes to finding the perfect candidate
6) Believe in yourself as a recruitment consult, you can make the difference between the candidate getting the job or not. (it helps to always think your candidate isn’t the favorite)
7) Expect the worst and prepare
I hope this is of benefit and as you can see and as a good friend of mine put, “it isn’t rocket science”
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How to make New Business Easy
There are so many books on this subject that I almost do not know where to start. I once said if you make enough calls something will happen. If only it was so simple!
In the early days it was just a case of calling as many people as possible and the law of averages would ensure success on its own. What holds us back is we all hate cold calling, so we try to avoid making the calls. So what I hope to achieve in the next few paragraphs is some hints and tips to make it less painful
First you need to have a system of canvassing, although when I started it was a card based system. Today there are many Contact Database systems and if you do not want to go to a cost of a specific recruitment package then there are plenty of alternatives such as Maximizer or ACT Then it is just a case of calling each contact individually and asking if they have any position to fill.
When you make your canvas calls it is also important to gain extra info, such as its size, how often they recruit, who is the contact, how many staff they employ etc. More importantly show an interest in their company. If you do this it is amazing how many times when they said no at the beginning, only to say “It just so happens Bob is looking at the moment” just as you are about to put the phone down.
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