October 29, 2012

How to recruit me.

This applies more so to independent recruitment firms then it does in house recruiters.

In the past I’ve received 30 emails in a week from recruiters. These days it’s more like 5-10. In the last 5 years I would estimate I’ve been sent at very least 100 opportunities a year. That’s 500 opportunities I have had the chance to consider. One of these was even a recruiter trying to hire me for the job I quit the day before. Of the rest of the 499 potential opportunities, 1 has lead to a job. It was my first job. In any other industry, providing a service that is 1/500 would speak volumes to the effectiveness of the service. While that may or may not be true I still believe opportunity breeds opportunity so I entertain every email that I get from recruiters.

Even though it’s proved not be effective in my career I still entertain all opportunities. I have come up with a list entitled How to recruit me so that recruiters will know what the best way to approach me is if they truly want to hire me. In the interest of increasing the effectiveness and decreasing the amount of time I spend wasting time with bad third party recruiters I offer this advice and hope you will implement it

If you want to recruit me:

1) Contact me via email first. Do not call my personal phone number during business hours until I explicitly express interest in speaking about the job more.

2) When you contact me via email, provide me full transparency on the opportunity. This builds trust and I only work with people I trust. Include the company name, and whatever job description you have. If I do not know who the company is, I am not likely to pursue your lead as for all I know, it’s the company I am currently working for. If you are a recruitment firm, I will never go to the company directly but I must know who they are before going forward.

3) If you try to pressure me to meet in person or talk on the phone before I validate that I am interested in your opportunity I will not be interested in your opportunity.

4) If we have spoken before or I have spoken to people in your recruitment firm you will get a lot of points for knowing that, referencing it and not duplicating effort.

5) Please make sure you read my Linked In and Resume.

Thank you for reading this. I wish you the best of luck with recruiting me.

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