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Cold Call Recruiting
Recruiting & Staffing
Cold Call Recruiting
Exchange ideas about sourcing, screening, interviewing, finding passive candidates, measuring your results, and more.
Does anyone know of a good training seminar, or literature that I can use to train my recruiting team to be more active in cold calling into companies to recruit talent?
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Forums » Topic Forums » Recruiting & Staffing » Cold Call Recruiting
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Cold Call Recruiting
posted at 8/14/2008 7:02 AM EDT
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Posts: 22
First: 4/5/2006 Last: 8/14/2008 |
I'm an executive recruiter and I agree with roninfinger. Calling into companies and "presenting opportunities" to competitive employees is not only ethical but necessary in today's competitive marketplace. If you don't actively teach your in house team to do this properly then you will never win the battle for talent. Inately it is the responsiblity of the HR organization to ensure that an employee is content within their own organization so instead of tagging it as "unethical" or "bad business" perhaps you should work on employee retention programs and benefits. At the end of the day it is the candidates decison to "listen" or "ignore" the opportunities that are presented to them. Out of 10 placements I make 8 of them are due to cold calling competitors or using traditional networking to penetrate a good candidate base. Thats another reason we are able to charge the fees that we do because companies will pay top dollar for top candidates and if those candidates come out of competitors then the competitors should have been more active in retaining their talent. And yes I did approve this message(for all you political pundits out there) |
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Cold Call Recruiting
posted at 8/14/2008 11:37 AM EDT
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Posts: 1
First: 8/14/2008 Last: 8/14/2008 |
I personally am a big fan of cold-calling as a way to source for top talent. I disagree with a previous member's post about the fact that most employees are passive job seekers who have their resume posted on one of the main job boards - I absolutely do not see that as a trend at all - in fact, recruiting has evolved so much away from just posting on main job boards that with my recruiting team, it becomes a backup in many cases after we exhaust other "non-traditional" sourcing methods of finding talent. I do not consider cold-calling unethical; however, I will agree that there are unethical recruiters out there who use cold-calling techniques dishonestly - that I do not agree with. I absolutely believe there are learned techniques to call into companies that take practice, articulation, and perseverance. I admire recruiters who do this well. I encourage my recruiters to hone these skills (along with many others like overall Web 2.0 recruiting which I am another huge fan of). There are absolutely companies out there who train in this area. One is www.techtrak.com, and they were featured at the 2007 ERE conference. They have worked with major companies like Disney, and the recruiter who I sent to attend came back with very specific scripts and tips on how to conduct effective cold-calls. We have had SO much success utilizing this as a sourcing tactic. If someone is willing to listen to the opportunity and make a move from a cold call, there was already something missing from their current job. If they are not open to considering the opportunity, we get referrals (similar to what you'd hear from an agency). I have a great group of corporate recruiters, and I constantly push them to think outside of the norm, to help push recruiting to the edge, to be creative, to reach out, to practice.
To those out there that use ethical techniques to recruit, however unorthodox, I applaud you. We've got to keep pushing the envelope, and that will sometimes mean being on the offense, or in other words, proactive recruiting. Happy Recruiting! |
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Cold Call Recruiting
posted at 8/14/2008 11:57 AM EDT
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Posts: 1
First: 8/14/2008 Last: 8/14/2008 |
The cold calling is a common practice, head hunter or not - don't let any of these posts fool you. It happens and it's a way to find top talent. The best candidates are already working...and it's the only way to find passive candidates. |
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Cold Call Recruiting
posted at 8/14/2008 12:02 PM EDT
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Posts: 1
First: 8/14/2008 Last: 8/14/2008 |
As unpopular as cold calling may be to most people, if done professionally, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Even mouthing the words 'cold calling' makes a lot of people uneasy - but it's how business gets done around the world. Most of the companies we work at wouldn't have any revenue if we didn't have salespeople willing to actively seek out and talk to strangers. From a recruiting perspective, there's no difference. Whether you're competing for business currently owned by a competitor or your competiting for top talent, you must always be candid about your intentions and deliver a compelling (truthful) message. Once you've done that, it is up to the prospect or candidate to make the decision whether to take the next step.
Anyways, I looked into sales training for recruiters and it appears that Personified (CareerBuilder.com's new consulting arm) offers a course along these lines called the Recruiter Development Institute. |
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Cold Call Recruiting
posted at 8/15/2008 6:58 AM EDT
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Posts: 3870
First: 2/12/2002 Last: 11/2/2009 |
I believe that the comment above about "raiding", eg calling into competitors to source candidates, isn't really on point here.
Calling into competitors to source candidates is a common and accepted business practice. That's not "raiding". That's simply a good recruiter sourcing a candidate who, because it's from a competitor, is almost certainly going to get client attention. What would be raiding and would be unethical if not illegal would be simply wholesale enmass recruiting and hiring of a competitors resources in an effort to harm the competitors business. That's raiding and is legally actionable. |
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Cold Call Recruiting
posted at 8/18/2008 12:59 PM EDT
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Posts: 1
First: 8/18/2008 Last: 8/18/2008 |
All's fair in love and recruiting. Okay, not really but if it's done properly, there's nothing wrong with cold call recruiting. I've worked as both a recruiter and a headhunter and took a lot of my headhunting skills with me into the recruiter position. Granted, I wouldn't simply give the directive to call a competitor to steal their employees away...you really need to know what you're doing and how to approach it. But, as someone else said, so many employees are passive seekers that, unless it's a position that requires a special skill, cold calling is hardly necessary. |
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Cold Call Recruiting
posted at 8/20/2008 12:23 AM EDT
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Posts: 12
First: 7/16/2003 Last: 7/26/2011 |
Not sure if I understood correctly-making cold calls to employers to recruit talents could be interpreted as calling employers to hire talent pool this company has.
I have worked with Federal Govt project where I as a recruiter have to make cold call to employer to sell some iNternationally trained professionals talents to give them Canadian experience. |
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Cold Call Recruiting
posted at 8/20/2008 2:36 PM EDT
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Posts: 6
First: 8/20/2008 Last: 4/13/2011 |
The best talent does not always have their resume posted on the job boards. The art of finding top talent as a recruiter comes from the willingness to call anyone that you think would make a great hire for the position your are trying to fill. This means, asking everyone you know or talk to about the position you are trying to fill and asking who they know of that might be interested/qualified. Then see if you can get the referral. This practice is used in sales all the time (i.e., if you liked how I treated you as a customer, would you be willing to give me the names of 3 people you know that might also benefit from my product?). So, cold calling into other companies, if done, should not be done with the intent of recruiting the person you speak with on the phone. Rather, the intent should be to get them to feel comfortable enough with you to refer talent in your direction. |
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