This means finding a good candidate who probably has a job, and does not have time to conduct their own job search, is interested in finding a new job, and uses you as their Agent to proactively market their resume to your client contacts.

This could be done with temps and perm candidates.

Example: In IT recruiting these companies often hire people as full time contractors, and then place them on various projects.  But when happens when a project ends, and there is nothing new lined up yet? The contractor sits on the bench, getting paid to do nothing. The recruiters will add the contractor’s skills to a summary, and then send out an email to every potential customer in town showing which contractors they have available for work.  And often times companies will view the skill summaries, realize the have a need, and hire the available contractor. This is how these IT contracting firms try to move a temp candidate from one project to another, keeping them profitable and out there billing.

I have never seen a traditional temp staffing agency do this, they talk about it, but few actually do it.   Normally they place a person into a 2 months temp secretary job, then wait until the last minute where that job is ending.  And then the temp is out of work again. Often times the temp goes to another agency, and gets placed by them.  In this example the temp agency should be maintaining a record of every temp out working, and when they are projected to come down off assignment.  And at least a week before the assignment ends, the recruiters or sales reps should be proactively marketing the skill summaries of these temps to every decision maker in town for two reasons.

1. It helps brand the company name
2. It at least gives you a chance to move a temp from one client to another so you do not lose billable hours

Skill Marketing and Sales:  The best way to sell is to introduce yourself to a decision maker by sending them a qualified resume first.  Then use that resume as a legit reason for a follow up call where you can introduce yourself. 

Recruiters make money two basic ways.  First, they proactively market resumes of their HOT candidates seeing who in town will bite, hiring the person and paying a fee.   The second way to make money is searching to find people for specific job orders.

If you work a job order the odds are less then 50% you will find a candidate to fill it.  But if you recruited a truly hot candidate, and if you thoroughly marketed that resume to every company in town that might hire such a person, surely someone will hire the candidate and pay a fee.

Lesson:  The best model is to focus mostly on recruiting, non stop recruiting to source EMPLOYED people.  Employed people are too busy working to have time to search for a job.  And this gives you time to market their resume around town.  If a person is unemployed, they are doing their own job search, not waiting on you.  And odds are they will find themselves a job before you will, thus wasting your time.  Skill Marketing is best limited to candidates who are employed, or coming down off a temp assignment.

Which would work best if I called on you?

1. I send you a resume of a qualified person, even if you never gave me a job order. And I call to see if you have any interest in the resume. At lease there I came to the table with a legit reason to call you.
2. Or, I call you with nothing much to say, just to ask you for job orders

Don’t you think my sending you the resume first would help break the ice and give me a legit reason to call you, as opposed to calling you for no reason and essentially begging for a job order?

I once placed a person as a sales rep with a national staffing company in St Louis.  After he was hired, he learned the two recruiters who supported him were relatively new, and not trained well.  His manager was on his back pushing him to sell and bring in job orders.  But the sales rep could not do it. He did not trust his two recruiters, and knew they would fail to source good candidates. So the sales rep was worried he would be out there making promises he could not deliver.

The manager was pressuring the sales rep to sell and bring in business, rather then focus on beefing up the recruiting side of the branch.  That is putting the cart before the horse.  What the manager should have done is beefed up the recruiting side of the branch first & acted as the sales rep herself. She should have ensured the recruiters were trained, and sourcing good candidates on a regular basis, so she could then act as the sales rep and proactively market the resumes.  And then, once she knew her recruiters were solid, then she could hire a sales rep and move herself up into more of a manager role.

Remember this;  What are we selling? We are either selling Hot Candidates, or our ability to find Hot Candidates.  This means recruiting is really the most important piece of the staffing industry in that without candidates, we have nothing to sell. 

If you recruit a few good candidates per month and market their resumes, you at least have a product to sell.  If you have no good candidates, then all you are selling is a concept, the potential that maybe you can help a company find people to hire.  And that is not much of a sales pitch.