Are You a Job Matcher or a Recruiter?
In this guide to recruiting success, you will find the answer and powerful tools to improve your impact as a recruiter. On average, staffing recruiters successfully place a mere 2-5% of the candidates they speak to, leaving the other 95-98% with an impression of you. What impression are you leaving behind?
How job seekers perceive you is your reputation. And that reputation is what brings people back to you, rewards you with referrals, differentiates you, and makes your efforts a profit source for you and your client or employer. You begin to establish your reputation the moment you interact with a candidate, and those first impressions are the most lasting.
In our guide to recruiting success, find out how you can make a great first impression and strengthen your reputation as a recruiting professional throughout your interactions with your candidates. We will differentiate a job matcher vs. a professional recruiter and how the latter moves you toward better candidate relationships, more referrals, better placements, and more profitable results.
A job matcher approaches candidates in a superficial way, focuses on matching skills on resumes with open job orders, and contacts as many candidates as possible until one is available and interested in learning more about the job. Job matchers spend minimal time truly understanding their candidates’ goals, wants, needs, differentiators and are more focused on filling a submittal quota, not aligning a candidate with the best opportunity.
A professional recruiter, still focused on the metrics, takes a much different approach. Rather than leading with their plan immediately, they begin by learning about the candidate. Professional recruiters listen to the candidate first rather than go straight to talking about a job. It can be premature to think you have “the perfect job” for a candidate without first understanding who that candidate is beyond their resume.
The Guide to Recruiting Successfully
In this guide to recruiting, we will share with you five tips that you can apply immediately to drive a better candidate experience, strengthen your reputation, and leave a positive impression on your candidates.
1) Be Genuine.
Job Matcher: Sends a form email to as many candidates as possible that meet the minimum required experience for a job posting.
Recruiter: Gets to know the candidate first before presenting job opportunities
The candidate is often in a high-stakes search for livelihood. Be a straight shooter about any details and opportunities you can. Let them know what is going on in the marketplace and where their job experience and skills land them. This lets a candidate know that you see them clearly, and they aren’t just another checked box to you. A recent survey shows that 64% of respondents view that an agent’s knowledge and ability to resolve an issue in a single interaction are keys to a good customer service experience. At the same time, 90% of customers find personalized experiences appealing. By combining competence and personalization, and you will have a happy candidate that feels you are genuine.
2) Be Responsive.
Job Matcher: Gets back to the candidate only when and if they have news.
Recruiter: Sets up a communication plan with the candidate, so they know when they will hear back next and always responds promptly.
How to be responsive: How many times have you hit refresh on your inbox an hour when you are waiting to hear about a job offer or feedback from a hiring manager? Responsiveness is crucial. According to CareerBuilder’s 2017 Candidate Experience Study, 81% of job seekers agree that regular status updates from potential employers would significantly improve the job search. Further, never hearing back about a job they didn’t get hired for is enough reason for a candidate to never talk to you again. They will also consider this a poor experience that they may then share with their peers. Timely and frequent contact reminds the job seeker that you are their lifeline to opportunity.
3) Demonstrate Experience.
Job Matcher: Offering opportunities to candidates that are not a fit
Recruiter: Takes in as much information as they share. A recruiter researches the companies, jobs, and marketplaces they support.
Go deep into an industry rather than widely into the numbers game. Understanding the marketplace makes you a valuable resource. Speak with hiring teams to absorb their needs and culture whenever possible. Conduct research on hiring trends and industry standards specific to the types of jobs you recruit for and listen to the job seekers; their experiences in the job-hunting trenches are anecdotal but vital. “When customers share their story, they’re not just sharing pain points. They’re actually teaching you how to make your product, service, and business better. Your customer service organization should be designed to efficiently communicate those issues.” – Kristin Smaby, “Being Human is Good Business.”
4) Be an Advisor.
Job Matcher: There for the candidate’s job placement.
Recruiter: There for the candidate.
When the candidate feels the preceding three qualities from you, then you can become an advisor. Your knowledge of the marketplace makes you an ideal call for advice on everything from interview tips, best practices counsel, when and how to ask for a raise, resignation letter how-to, or whether to write a thank-you note after a second interview. Let the candidate know you are up for that by providing it from the beginning. An advisor is decidedly graduated from job-matching into actual recruitment level.
If you are genuine, responsive, and experienced, you are qualified to be an advisor, but you have to embrace the role. 70% of experiences in the marketplace are based on how the customer feels they are being treated, according to a study. If you want a candidate to call you back in three years when they are ready for a new position or to refer their second cousin to you, then you have to be willing to continue your relationship beyond the superficial.
5) Be Transparent.
Job Matcher: Eager to talk at first contact, but the job seeker may never hear from them again.
Recruiter: Explains the hiring process to the candidate and then continues to let them know what is or isn’t happening, so they feel they have an ally.
This is simple. Be discreet, straightforward, and consistent. Don’t sugarcoat a closed door. And if an opportunity becomes unavailable, help the candidate find the next option. Transparency goes beyond taking the time to call the candidate about bad news or no news; it means that the candidate never feels like they don’t know what is coming next. Always tell them when they are going to hear from you. Even if you have nothing new to report, call them when you said you would.
Candidate experience is the cornerstone of long-term recruitment success. Having an industry resource for rating candidate experience can help recruiters learn how they can meet or even exceed the expectations of their candidates. According to Vendasta, only 14% of consumers consider using a business with a one or two-star rating. How many stars would a candidate give you?
Boost Your Effectiveness as a Recruiter
Profits are linked to placement and retention, and a perfect match is not always as easy as your first call or idea. The White House Office of Consumer Affairs states that, on average, loyal customers are worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase. In recruitment terms, this translates to referrals and call-backs. In our candidate-centric marketplace, recruiters need to find deeper wells of talent to be successful. Referrals are the best path to those deep wells. And only GREAT recruiters get great referrals.
Want to improve your effectiveness as a recruiter? Apart from following our tips on this guide to recruiting, you can also check out Great Recruiters. Our experience and reputation management platform for recruiting firms can help streamline your recruitment strategy and turn your hiring professionals into the great recruiters that you want them to be.
To learn more about how Great Recruiters can boost your recruitment GREATness, schedule a demo today.
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