Recruiting a candidate for a role is a lot like a dating and same goes for getting new business, new clients. But in this short article I’ll focus on the recruiting aspect.
You have to pique candidate’s interest, to make the candidate want to work with you.
The first discussion with a recruiter is very important to get the right candidates lined up for the jobs you’re offering. And that’s why it is very important to pay attention to the recruiters you’re hiring.
Most of the software industry is outsourcing recruitment to various external companies nowadays and that would seem like a great idea. The recruiting agencies should have the best people hired for the job. Not to mention they also might have bonuses depending on the placements they make. And yet, in the fast moving world we live in, most of the recruiting agencies are just hiring people based on quantity and not at all quality.
It is so damaging for a business to save on the recruiting costs and to hire small and not so skilled recruiting agencies just to get them CVs of potential candidates lined up. Since the discussions with the recruiters are setting the first impression with a candidate, that image can hardly recover.
I have dealt with so many recruiters across my career, with so many agencies both as a hiring manager and as a candidate. And so did my friends, my clients, my colleagues. And the common denominator across all of our experiences, is that the weaker the recruiters are, the less experienced and less useful CVs we get. And the more experienced and the more valuable the candidate, the less chances there are to go further with a recruiter who doesn’t peak his interest.
In the beginning of the year, I noticed a lot of eager recruiters are calling and emailing and it made it easier for me to analyze and write this article now. I spend a few minutes with a few recruiters on the phone the past few days and I am sharing with you my thoughts … One recruiter called, asked for my name, never mentioned where he got my CV, he told me he has a role, just the title, no more information and started asking me questions about nationality, when I could start a new job, whether I did that and the other … but completely failed to listen to what I had to say. A different recruiter called just minutes after, saying one of his colleagues gave him my CV, went ahead with the same line of questions, again, not giving a damn of anything I tried to say….
And then I got a call from a different recruiter, he wanted to check in, learn if I was interested in new roles, what types of roles, what budget, and so on.
Although the interactions might look similar, there is a huge difference – the last recruiter I mentioned, has all the chances to get the bonus for placing a candidate like me with a company whether the other two I mentioned before, regardless of how interesting the roles they are advertising might be, they stand zero chances.
We live in a world where every company wants the highest skilled people, the most creative, the most innovative, the most willing to build for the company’s success but we have to remember, those candidates have choices, a lot of them and if we want them, they have to want us.
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