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When Recruiting rhymes with Marketing… or Dating !

18/02/2014 Alex US

I participated to the Social Recruiting Strategies Conference that was held in San Francisco end of January. It is obvious that the ways in which recruiters operate is changing deeply and rapidly. It is changing so much that we no longer speak about candidates but about prospects when referring to a new recruitment process !

The recruitment cycle is actually compared to a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) that begins by crucial marketing work :

• Contacts are considered as leads or prospects (= potential candidates) who are going to integrate the pipe (= contact pool)
• It is necessary then to screen the leads (= gather information on the contact) in order to measure the probability of turning them into opportunities (= turn the contact into a candidate)
• The screening process requires a specific ‘to do’ list (email, phoning, appointments, …) depending on the given lead (= the contact)
• When the lead has turned into an opportunity (= the contact has turned into a candidate), the marketer’s work (= sourcer’s work) stops here and the sales engineer’s work (=recruiter’s work) begins
• We then enter into the sales process (= the recruitment process) of the company

You may be asking yourself what is that strange word used on the 4th bullet point : sourcer ? In order to comprehend this word and get a better understanding of the topic, I invite you to read the following article of The Recruiters Lounge. In short, the sourcer is the one who finds new leads, he is a « hunter« , rather than the person who merely executes a recruitment process. Social medias such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter have now become his everyday tools.

Also, in an era which aspires to be Social and wants to rely on values such as teamwork, development, transparency or trust, just talking about prospects, pipes or hunting to evoke candidates and recruitments could regarded as shocking ! But if we really think about it, this approach allows to better understand the candidates expectations and wishes, to know if he will be compliant with the company’s culture. It enables the recruiter to take into account the candidates psychosocial dimension rather than just perceiving him as a simple resource.

This psychosocial dimension has become so important that in this very same conference, two speakers compared the recruiting process with the dating process :

• At first, we are attracted by a person for different reasons (look, charisma, humor, …). For a sourcer, it is like being attracted by a profile
• Then only do we try to find out more about this person, who he or she is, what does he or she do for living, what does he or she like etc. The screening process begins…
• When we start liking what we discover and want to learn more, we start bringing attention to us and a discussion may start. This is the famous ‘to do’ list which is going to help us reach the – beloved – seducing phase (we can then speak of the commercial process), and how do we get a IRL Meeting (In Real Life)

I just want to remind all those who really enjoy the seducing phase that overselling oneself is never a good option since the disappointment probability grows enormously a few days after hiring…. This is why there are so many articles dealing with company branding, dealing with the importance for HR and managers to withhold the real company values, to be transparent, genuine with the candidates and the employees.

What recruiting marketing and dating have in common is the notion of commitment ! In all cases, a lead can only be turned into an opportunity if we succeed in engaging the « object of our desires », true whether for getting a job or getting married.  With this is mind, the post & pray approach is not necessarily the preferred method to engage people. Many people could be interested by a job opportunity without actually applying, just because they think they don’t fit or because they’re happy with their current job. So it becomes necessary to engage them, getting in touch with them, discussing, pushing relevant information.

Often the exotic profiles, meaning the ones having rare skills or very special talents, or profiles corresponding to critical jobs are over-hunted. So they never look for a job, it’s rather the job which finds them. And if by any chance they do look for one, it won’t necessarily correspond to the moment where you have published the job offer… That’s why we hear about the end of the post & pray approach because it is no longer sufficient !

So my dear recruiter friends, without going as far as registering to match.com or eHarmony to get some training in the art of seduction, nothing prevents you from re-discovering some good old marketing recipes that could attract key talents into your company ;)