Over the past 15 years, I have placed with countless consultants and full-time employees. Sometimes you know when you talk to that candidate that they are the right for a specific job you are working on. The candidate will go through the interview process very quickly, get the job, and be content in the role with that customer. What I’d like to highlight is the candidate that doesn’t initially leap off the page, but because you’ve taken the time to get to know your client and that client manager, you can turn that "I'm not so sure" into yes, let's have a phone screen. That phone screen turns into an onsite and in some cases, was able to create an offer.
So, how does this happen? It happened through two critical phone calls. The first call was from me, as the account manager or in some cases, the recruiter to the candidate and the second call was from me to the end client! What if I never picked up the phone to make those personal connections? The simple act of taking the next step to reach out to the candidate who applied for me to see beyond the resume and What if I never picked up the phone to call the client?
I had a job one time where they wanted two candidates, but two candidates weren't available with those combinations of skills. I had one candidate whom they liked but weren't completely sold on. Partially because the candidate was expensive, and with the rate for this resource, the budget wouldn’t allow for the client to hire two candidates. So I to work with the client closed and was able to convince them to determine if he was a fit through his work efforts. We placed the candidate, and they ended being able to handle the work of two resources, but I would have never known that if I didn't make that personal connection by picking up the phone initially and make that call. It turned out to be one of the best contractors I placed, and we solved multiple problems for the client, further solidifying our relationship.
There's always something we can do as a recruiter, or at the very least, you have to try to make it work on behalf of your candidate and client. Of course, we're dealing with people, and people have tendencies, personalities, and fallacies because we're human!
Often for those of us in the staffing industry, we are faced with the following challenges:
An organization we are interviewing with has an end client that you would work with daily, and the end client says no based on just looking at a resume and not even doing a phone interview?What about when a company has turnover, and the recruiter you're working with changes? When that new recruiter takes over the search and doesn't call you to learn about you? The next message you get is that the client is going to pass.
These voids in the process can lead to our customers missing out on great candidates and great candidates on missing out on the perfect environment for their skills and personality! When you take over a new search, you should call the candidates in the process. If after that call, you feel like they're not a good fit, reject them, that's normal. But to reject them without having a call and just saying the client is going to pass, that leads to missed opportunities for our clients and our candidates.
What we often see is that our client hires someone or multiple people, and they end up not working out. It's not that the folks they hire are not strong hires; it's that they did not do a full complete process took shortcuts and avoided personal connections. Now not only have you lost time, but the end client might also lose confidence in you as the staffing professional and could ultimately result in losing a client. That cost is impossible to recover as opposed to recovering the cost of losing an employee(s).
I am proud to have collaborated with Tracz Consulting on this article!
Comments