The Recruiter "What If" Chronicles

I fall into moments of What If and sometimes I am looking for others that already answered it. I use mentors, coaches, forums, facebook groups, whatever makes sense to learn, but I still wish there was a place I could go to just have the list of What Ifs, so I starting looking at all my questions and compiled a list to share.

So here goes my first rendition of The Recruiter What If Chronicles with some answers to some of my old "What If" Scenarios.

What If...

What if a Manager doesn't see results each week or the first week?

Explain that the first week is heavy research and outreach and it could take a few days to start setting up calls and interviews.

What if you do not know how to do email campaigns and CRM 1:1 marketing in your ATS/CRM platform?

You are missing out on potential opportunities with people that already know you or your company with almost complete notes as well potentially... also, email campaigns are a great way to gain additional exposure to perfect candidates that maybe warm or slightly more engaged. IF you do cold email campaigns, it could work well too, just be careful and follow all best practices.

What if everything you are doing for a recruiting search assignment is not working?

Go back to the job, looking at the synonyms of titles and keywords of similar words and build out new boolean strings. Or, find a list of similar companies nearby and just find what the employees are called at each company you are trying to target via a keyword search and then go back in again with companies and keywords versus using keywords and titles.

What if your recruiting team needs more resources, what is best to get them?

Making sure your team has an awesome ATS/CRM, chrome extension tool, Linkedin Recruiter and an Indeed account is ideal, but anything less can work too if you look at alternative platforms that allow you similar or same type access, like Linkedin Sales Navigator, etc.

What if you are not able to find more candidates on the resources you have?

Talk to your Manager or find a coach/trainer in recruiting to help you with sourcing.

What if a Hiring Manager is worried to hire due to salary?

Then show them enough candidates across the spectrum to show them the difference in personality, skills and experience and have them make the choice, but try to see if they would be open to interviewing them. Part of our job is to show them what the best, most competitive talent looks like.

What if your candidate has a last minute change of heart and decides not to accept (the cherry on top... to make it more challenging, the candidate's partner is not open to them changing the jobs since it's a family company. )

Allow it to happen. We can not force things to happen and be blamed. Allow people to make thier own decisions. Just focused on never giving up on finding backup candidates.

What if your candidate can not relocate?

That is partly on us. We need to target people that have some type of connection to the city you are relocating them to or else its really hard on people to relocate to a brand new city without a passion, family member or some type of connection to it. You can of course get it done, I relocated someone from Tennessee to Idaho due to thier love of horses and wanting to own a ranch, but again, based on passions, it's a lot easier.

What if your candidate is perfect but the hiring manager feels they are too junior?

Show your hiring managers candidates from senior down junior levels of experience needed for the role, but at least get them to meet your favorite candidate even if they are a little junior and prep the candidate to highlight the areas that show thier strengths.

What if your hiring manager has never hired before?

Prep the Hiring Manager before every interview on how to intrigue the candidate and not just interview them, so they know if they like the candidate , the candidate will be intrigued in the opportunity. Make sure to go over laws and the No Nos in the interview process.

What if your candidate has not interviewed in many years or scared to interview?

Prep your candidate and remember to teach your expert candidates that they are experts and in the interview, they should feel like a consultant, not a candidate. They can come up with solutions and ideas to all thier issues since they been doing it so long, so flip the mind set to being a solutions consultant and helping this company with thier gaps, challenges, and frustration areas :)

I will keep compiling questions I get and posting answers to them in future newsletters.

Thank you for reading, as always,

Daniel