It’s a sad fact of our industry: There are shady recruiters out there. Entire shady agencies, actually. And they’re tainting the reputation of recruiters everywhere.
In a recent survey of more than 1,000 job-seekers and employers, more than half (52 percent) said recruitment agencies did not deal with them honestly in the past year. Less than 5 percent said they would trust a recruiter to be honest about whether a role was right for them.
Integrity is the antidote to such mistrust. In an era where you can practically see alarms going off in people’s heads the minute you announce yourself as a recruiter, the ones who will build long-term, sustainable careers are those who cultivate genuine and trusted relationships. Unprincipled practices might win you a sprint or two, but they won’t win you a marathon. Recruiting success is a marathon.
Let’s talk about some best practices of building real and honest relationships with candidates and why they’re so important to achieving long-term success in recruiting.
Bullying is a terrible recruiting tactic
Be respectful. Reach out and let them know you’re interested. Tell them how you got their name. If they aren’t looking to leave their current role, ask if it’s OK to keep in touch. Find out which communication channels they prefer. This is the first step in building trusted relationships. The idea is that when the perfect position for them opens up, they will trust and welcome hearing from you.
Don’t interrogate your candidate about their background without answering their questions first. Don’t imply (or say outright) that they can’t get a better job without you. Don’t be too persistent. These actions leave a terrible taste in the mouths of candidates.
Match them to relevant opportunities
A common complaint is that recruiters use a “spray and pray” approach to finding good candidates. Candidates know when you’re trying to shoehorn in a poor fit.
Be genuine when matching opportunities to candidates. Read their LinkedIn profile, learn what they really do and suggest jobs to them that genuinely suit them well. Listen to what they want. When you do come to them with an opportunity, they’ll trust that you’re just not trying to fill a role with a warm body.
Communicate authentically
Stop talking about you and your needs and focus on them and their careers. Candidates will tire of a recruiter who comes off as disingenuous and only interested in making quota.
Genuine relationships take time to cultivate. Engage them in ways that indicate you’re interested in being helpful. Share a good article or video. Bring genuine insight regarding the client, the role, culture, salary, etc. Don’t ask about salary right off the bat; that immediately puts people on the defensive.
And, especially in the beginning, don’t say, “Trust me!” They have no reason to trust you; you haven’t proven yourself to them yet. Save that for when you’ve earned it.
Good recruiting will always be about relationships
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Relationships matter. A good recruiter is a trusted partner to their candidates. When you consistently demonstrate that you are interested in them and their needs—that you respect and value their talents and experience and won’t try to sell them on a poor fit—you become a recruiter whose judgement they trust.
Long-term, sustainable success in recruiting always has been and always will be built on such relationships.
TrackerRMS & the point of a good software solution
The point of recruiting software is to facilitate relationship building. Everything your software does should be working to that goal.
TrackerRMS is the leading cloud-based integrated relationship management system for recruiter, candidate and client success. The TrackerRMS team knows that relationships are the foundation of your success, and that fact informs everything we do. See how TrackerRMS can help your team build better relationships and become more efficient. Schedule a demo today.
