We’ve all been there in the recruiting world, trying to do something different. In our efforts to communicate and find talent, we have all been guilty of taking certain short cuts and making mistakes along the way. While certain shortcuts help us save time, some just make you look unprofessional and lazy. It reminds us that we need to put in quality efforts to get quality results. Sending impersonal, bulk emails to recruit people without being truly directed to them is a big mistake. Try not to look for the quick and easy; rather, take the extra time to know who your target is and their expertise before you hit the send button. Do your best to build a relationship, not just a transaction. Be clear, concise and genuine. Your results and recruiting success with emails will certainly improve. It’s a shame a lot of recruiters these days just don’t put in the time or effort that goes into setting up a successful recruitment process, with relationship building being the core.
As a 17-year-veteran of recruiting, I highly suggest that this should be your number one goal: Know who you’re recruiting. “READ, not SPEED.” Stop the insanity of the mass emails and “inmails.” I’m amazed that many recruiters, newbies and those with experience have gotten lazy and try to take the mass communication shortcut. They send out hundreds of generic emails at one time, hoping for the right target without focusing on a potential candidate’s background, experience and location to even know if they would be a good fit for the opportunity. Failure comes when a recruiter sees a few key words or key acronyms and adds that person to the mass clipboard list, without getting to know that person and building a rapport.
If you haven’t taken the time to read the resume or profile correctly before you send out an email or inmail, it wastes your time, your talents time, and your company’s time. This will ultimately make you look unprofessional. Take a few extra minutes and the needed effort to read over and direct your communications to the correct individuals. Case in point: I recently received an email that started with, “In looking at your profile, I was very impressed with your background and work experience and have a great consulting opportunity for you with a Meditech client of mine.” The recruiter obviously didn’t read my overall profile, but rather saw a keyword, and moved forward with an email, without even reading that I recruit for the same talent.
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Another example is “My name is XXX, recruiter with “any company” and I noticed you have an impressive background in healthcare consulting and would like to speak with you about career goals.” One of these came from a so-called recruiting director. Again, this person failed to take a few more minutes to read my profile to see I was a recruiter myself. This goes for whomever you’re targeting: Read before you react.
If you still want to send out a so called “mass type” eMail/inMail, make it smaller five to 10 targeted individuals and no more. Then, take the time to really read over the bios with eyes wide open, putting forth that little extra effort in targeting who you want to reach, couple that with a more personalized written communication, then chances are you will have genuinely interested individuals respond, versus a 100 emails, sent to the wrong audience. Remember, start a relationship and invest some time folks. The results will reflect your effort.
To sum it up, my advice is to take the extra time to research the individuals better, reviewing the resumes or online bios thoroughly. Also, learn to read “between the lines” to know your target audience and what he or she really knows or does within your industry. Our job as recruiters never gets any easier when trying to find that right candidate and sometimes that “needle in the haystack” to fit our clients specific needs. However the end result will always payoff with a more concentrated effort to better know your potential candidates. Remember, relationships matter.
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