Anyone Can Be an Independent Recruiter, Right?
Posted by Dave Nerz on Mon, Dec 19, 2011 @ 10:12 AM
I have attended several webinars that educate recruiters on how to build lists of hard-to-find candidates. Sometime these webinars are offered by those selling tools that make the process of list generation easier. You know the names: LinkedIn Recruiter Professional, ZoomInfo, and the Boolean search string education seminars. To the non-recruiter, it seems that candidate list generation is what is difficult about recruiting…finding more quality candidates. Even if refining a list of 1000 candidates down to the 20 top prospects is demanding, it is the next step that is really where recruiters separate themselves from researchers.
Don’t get me wrong, these recruiting resources are time savers for independent recruiters. They make the challenge of finding talent easier and in most cases increase recruiting profit and production. These are services that every recruiter should consider adding to their recruiting toolbox. But again, getting the names is easy…recruiting is difficult. This is where CEOs, CFOs, and the rest of the non-recruiter world lose touch with reality. Non-recruiter audiences think the list is what recruiting is all about. That’s like assuming someone who is a superb dishwasher can run a restaurant. It takes more. There is a bit of magic that happens between the creation of a candidate prospect list and the actual hire of a candidate. This reality is being missed by those not familiar with the recruitment process. Everyone thinks that with good access to names there is little need for a recruiter. We will see more prevalence of this thinking as LinkedIn promotes itself to the masses and Facebook, Google Plus, and others look for ways to monetize the value of their electronic recruiter networking platforms. So get ready. It has happened to other industries; it will happen to recruiting.
But the magic. Everyone forgets about the magic! The magic happens when a professional recruiter contacts someone on the 20-candidate short list and gets a referral to the perfect candidate who was not even on the original list of 1000! The magic happens when a seasoned recruiter gets a return call that the small company CEO could not have managed with 50 calls to the prospect! The magic happens when the global recruiter finds someone in Russia who speaks Portuguese and wants to relocate to Brazil. The magic happens when the tested recruiter works with the candidate to get their 3 horses, 5 llamas and a pig relocated to a new state! Why don’t independent recruiters get more credit for the magic that they make happen? Why does everyone think they can be a recruiter?
Magic = Experience x Knowhow. Magic is worth the price!
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