Recruiting – General Explanation:
First, let’s define the different types of job orders

Perm:  This is when a company cannot seem to find people to hire on their own, or they want a search to be discrete.  The goal is to find a qualified person who is employed, has the skills, and can be convinced to consider switching jobs to work for a different company.

Temp to Perm:  This is basically the same as above, except the customer wants to try out the new employee as a temp first before making them perm.  I think this temp to perm method of hiring can be a huge mistake.  Why?  ABC Company wants to hire an experienced sales person.  They give the job order to XYZ Recruiting.  The job is really permanent. But XYZ Recruiting wants to increase their temp billable hours and temp gross margins because the temp side of the branch is under performing.  So they convince ABC Company to consider the temp to hire method, which is really taking the perm fee and stretching it out over several months to create the illusion of increased temp billable hours and gross margin.  This creates many problems.  First, it is virtually impossible to cold call an experienced person who has a permanent job and talk them into quitting that job to switch companies starting off as a temp. Nobody in their right mind would do that.  So the temp to hire method eliminates cold call head hunting from the recruiter’s options to source candidates, and limits them to the few candidates they can find on the job boards or through ads.  The other problem is instead of collecting a clean perm fee,  with temp to perm the staffing company is paying payroll taxes, workers comp insurance and eating up tons of overhead which is necessary to bill the customer, track time cards, pay the candidate etc.  It seems to me if the job is in fact going to be perm, using the perm method of hiring is best for everyone.  And, it is a myth that hiring a person as a temp somehow provides the employer legal protection during a trial period.  The goal ought to be finding the best person to hire, and the temp to hire method eliminates cold call head hunting from the available options the recruiter has to source candidates.

Temp:  It should be as the word says.  The job should have a planned beginning and end.  Or, maybe the client just does not know up front if the job will become perm, although it might be. In that case it is ok to start off with temp and over time let the client decide if in fact they need the candidate ongoing, as a permanent employee.  The people who are available for temp staffing are either Career Temps, Contractors or those who just need to earn some money until they find a permanent job.

Career Temp & Contractors.  These are people with specific skills who enjoy the flexibility that comes with temporary staffing.  They work for 3 months on a project, take some time off, then find another temp job. To some people this flexibility to work when they want is just what they need.  And, they normally build relationships with their favorite staffing firms. An example is in the legal staffing field.  There are many Paralegals who work as temp contractors, and get placed over and over again by their favorite staffing firms.
So, when it comes to temp, a staffing a firm’s recruiters are limited to either career temps, or people who are unemployed and need to earn some money until they find a permanent job.

Steps to building a temp staffing practice from a recruiting perspective:
#1 – Pick a niche, specialize in certain types of jobs. For many years as I worked in the staffing industry, the companies I worked for did not understand the concept of specialization.  They thought Accounting was a specialty. Or IT was a specialty.  They are not.  IT and Accounting are Industries.  Within them are the specialties.  An example is within IT Microsoft is a specialty, so is Unix, so is network engineering.  Within Accounting  A/R  A/P is a specialty, so is SEC compliance, so is tax accounting.  Because I was forced to go after an entire industry such as IT or Accounting, my focus was too wide.  I could bring in job orders, but was never able to build much of a recruiting practice because one week I was recruiting for software engineers, the next week recruiting for network engineers.  I was never able to become well networked in any specific niche.  So 2 years later I was scrambling every month no different then when I started.  Later on in my career I learned the value of specialization.  Example:  At one time I specialized in the people who build cell phone towers. In time, I became known as the Go To Recruiter in that niche all over the USA. As I became well networked, word spread about who I was, and the people told each other about me. As such candidates from all over the USA started to call me, sending me their resumes, and the employers started to hear about me, calling me and asking for my help – rather then my having to call and sell to them.  When I learned to specialize, the business started to flow to me and I barely had to make sales calls.  And, I finally found that I could relax because every month I knew where my business was going to come from. I could finally see ahead, rather then wonder what type of business I might get during a month, and where it might come from.

What I just mentioned applies to both temp and perm.  You see, when it comes paying for advertising, ads work best when they have a focused message.

If your company is small, then it should be highly specialized and not begging for whatever business can be found.  If your company is larger, specific people should be assigned to focus on specific niches, rather then have everyone try to work on whatever business comes in the door.

Let’s use Legal Secretaries in this example:  This example can apply to any niche.  Pick a territory.  Start advertising to draw in whatever resumes come in. Research and find every law firm in your city and add them to your database. Create a one page brochure that clearly defines that you are a Recruiter who specializes in Legal Secretaries and that you want to introduce yourself, network and build a relationship.  Launch an ongoing Fax campaign. Although somewhat a waste of time, these Faxes often get circulated through the offices at your prospective customers.  Make calls into law firms and get through to Legal Secretaries. Introduce yourself as a recruiter they should know because you specialize in what they do.  Ask them for names of other Legal Secretaries they work with, or worked with at other law firms.

You must become a professional networker with a goal of finding the name of every Legal Secretary working at every law firm in your city.  This means making 50 to 100 outbound calls every day until you have built a vast network of contacts.

#3 – Collect information, who is working at which law firm?  What is their personal email, phone, etc.  Populate your database with names and contact information while also branding your message that you are a recruiter who specializes in the Legal Secretary niche in that city.

#4 – Suppose there are 4000 Legal Secretaries in your city.  Your goal should be to find and ID all of them.  Send them personal letters at their work address – call them and introduce yourself, make friends with them.

The title Professional Networker accurately describes what a Recruiter should be.

When a good recruiter talks to a Legal Secretary, as per this example, that Recruiter will walk away from that conversation with at least two names of other Legal Secretaries.  The whole idea of making calls and contacting people is to network with them, and ask for referrals to find others.

What will happen as you ID all the people in your niche, in your territory?  Those who are Career Temps will get to know who you are, and you will get to know them.  Plus, you would have documented all the law firms in that city + what type of law they specialize in.  You would condition the Career Temps to contact you when the project they are working on is coming to a close.  You can then act as their Agent, proactively marketing their resume to the Decision Makers at every law firm in town that might have a use for their skills. And, you would know which law firms to contact because you would have done your homework on all of them during your prospecting phase. So marketing Career Temps and placing them proactively is one way to control ongoing billable hours and gross margin.

By taking the time to find and document all 4000 Legal Secretaries, in this example – you will have many emails and phone numbers in your database.  As job orders come in, you can broadcast them to all the people in your database as sort of a direct help wanted ad method of reaching your target audience.  And you can bet those people will forward your email job broadcast to others, etc. By doing the work to build your network of contacts, you set yourself up to have a pool of people to broadcast jobs to, with hopes of drawing candidates from that pool of people to you.

Layered on top of your own network of contacts and all related work, you should also fund a weekly help wanted ads campaign in the best place to do so for your city. This could be the local newspaper or a job board.  The hot place to advertise jobs is different in every city.  The ads will at least reach the unemployed people who are actively looking, which is where you will find applicants for temp jobs.

If a staffing company stops job advertising to save money, and pressures recruiters to cold call, the recruiters will blindly call people without knowing if they are employed or not.  At least with help wanted ads you know the people reading them are actively looking. Therefore help wanted ads of some sort are a necessary ongoing business expense, especially when it comes to temp staffing.
Recruiting is not rocket science.  But many staffing companies do not follow the success principals that apply to recruiting.

Example:  IT is a very wide niche.  Yet in many IT staffing firms you will see the recruiters acting as Jacks of all Trades. Trying to cover any and every type of IT job order.  If a recruiter does that they will never become well connected, never name branded, and they will end up with a junk drawer full of useless resumes.  If we use IT as a niche, one recruiter should focus on Microsoft, another on Unix/Linux, another on network engineering – each recruiter should specialize in a segment of IT. And such a company should not go after all IT business when starting up. They ought to pick a segment, develop it, then expand to the next segment. Or, invest enough money to hire a few recruiters, directing each of them to specialize in their own segment of IT.

Although it is possible to throw a bunch of junk against the wall to see what sticks and find that some does stick, the best long term strategy from the recruiter’s perspective is to become a very well networked and branded recruiter in a specific job type, in a specific territory or industry.  This is true of both temp and perm.  An example with Temp is one recruiter can specialize in office admin personnel, another can specialize in warehouse workers, and another can specialize in telemarketers and sales people.

Components to Recruiting
I am going to share how I train my recruiters, but you can apply these lessons to your own niche as the principals are universal. Although my niche is the staffing industry, the following steps can be applied to most any industry.

#1 – I hired Melissa, and assigned her Atlanta as her territory. 

#2 – She researched to find every staffing company in and around Atlanta, adding them to our database from which to build a prospecting list.

#3 – Using various scripts, Melissa started cold calling into each and every staffing firm just to introduce herself to the people.  She would talk to a Sales Rep and through them learn the names of the Branch Manager, Regional Manager, maybe the Recruiter.   She would call in and pretend to be a job seeker, being patched through to the recruiting staff and then introducing herself to them.  Each call was purely a networking call. Melissa was not selling anything, just making friendly introductions and explaining how she could help the people she talked to.

#4 – She began to learn what each staffing company specialized in, and which business model they used so she understood the various cultures.

#5 – As Melissa built her contact list, she sent letters, emails and spoke to people all branding the same message.  “ I am a recruiter who specializes in what you do for a living, as such we both should know of each other”  “ If there is ever a day where you become unhappy in your job, contact me because I might have the contacts from which to help you find your next job”

Those are clear and motivating messages.  I am training Melissa to make 75+ cold calls per day to promote herself as the Go to Recruiter in her niche, in her territory.  She is becoming a household name. And when that happens, the business will flow to her.

#6 – As Melissa makes her calls and builds her contact database, word about her spreads. Executives at companies are calling her asking for her help, giving her job orders.  And, qualified candidates are coming to her each month, asking her to quietly find them another job. She can then proactively market the resumes creating interest, and earning a fee when a company bites on a resume and hires the candidate.

My job as her Mentor is to get on the phone with the owners, CEOs, Executives of companies she gets in the door with. I am the Closer, she listens and learns.  After enough times of hearing me, she began to handle all of this herself. Same with recruiting.  I can document all sorts of things here in writing.  But the best way to learn is to listen to an experienced recruiter. An example is Melissa sources a candidate, sets up a call with me, we hop on a 3 way call, I screen the candidate, ask qualifying questions, and explain the job opportunity with the customer in detail.  After a few times of listening to me on these training calls, Melissa began doing this all herself.  If you are not getting this type of personal attention from your manager, you need to question whether or not you are working for the right company!

I suggest your company considers filming one of your top recruiters and sales people conducting a series trainings.  Then convert that to DVD and distribute to each branch. Nobody reads written training manuals, and certainly a filmed training on DVD is the next best thing to a Live Training.

#7- Melissa is doing the right things to build a proper recruiting practice to where the foundation she lays today will drive business to her tomorrow.  A good recruiter never has to worry about where business will come from. It just comes!

#8 – As Melissa does her thing, she documents clear notes in the database so she can track communication activity covering both candidates and prospective customers.

#9 – The end result is Melissa now has every staffing company in Atlanta documented. She knows what they all specialize in, which business models they use, and the names of the people working in each branch.  Business now flows to her, and she gets to choose which companies are clients, and which become sources to recruit from.  She is now in control of her recruiting practice rather then scramble to find ways to do a deal every month as often happens out there.  For a person to make it long term in this career they must spend the time building their foundation, as that must be in place first is anything good and consistent is to follow.

#10 – I believe many staffing companies lack the understanding that training a person to become a top billing Recruiter or Sales Rep takes time.  What I often see happening is the hiring of people, put them into a sink or swim situation, then fire them at 90 days.  Over a year or two eventually enough people are hired and fired to where there is enough information in the database for a new person to finally have something from which to start off with and have a realistic shot and making it.  This is ridiculous.  The smart thing to do is hire the right person in the first place, and then stick with that person over the long term developing them into a top billing recruiter or rep.

Let me say that again.  Top billing recruiters and sales people are developed by a coach or mentor over a long period of time. They do not figure it out by themselves! Yet in many staffing companies the culture is to hire new people, put them into a sink or swim situation without the time attention or support of a truly qualified mentor. And then hire and fire over and over until finally someone sticks.  There is a better way!