A few months ago, I spoke with the VP of Marketing of a $700M company in the San Francisco Bay Area who had reached out to me regarding an opening for a Director of Global Demand Generation.
We barely got through introductions when he asked me the question that’s on the mind of all my prospective clients: “You’re located in Minneapolis. What makes you think that you can fill a position in San Francisco?” Yes, I understand the market for talent, as well as the Demand Generation industry, but I ran him through the three benefits of using a specialized recruiter.
Representing your Brand
What would you do if you were hiring for a demand generation position and the person you interviewed didn’t know the first thing about lead scoring, building a campaign, or even properly pronouncing Eloqua? How seriously would you take them? I hope you would say they’re simply not qualified for the position.
So why would a recruiter who doesn’t know the first thing about Demand Generation be considered qualified to recruit for those roles?
When I speak with candidates, they always ask, “How serious is your client?” Imagine the impression you can make when I respond with, “Serious enough that they engaged the services of a recruiter that specializes in Demand Generation.” It’s all about the candidate experience.
Who Applied vs. Who’s Available
One of the most common comments I hear from hiring managers is, “We want to see what traffic we can get out of our own posting before we put it out to recruiters.”
Sure, there’s always a possibility you get a fantastic candidate to apply to the job, they get hired, and you ride off into the sunset with an amazing new employee. If it could turn out like that, who wouldn’t want to avoid a recruiting fee?
Before running off to post all your open positions, let me ask you a question: How much control do you have over who applies to your job posting? If your answer is anything above 0%, I’d strongly recommend you focus your talent for mind control on creating world peace rather than on the corporate world.
My guess is that if you asked your CEO, he or she would want you to fill the position with the best talent available, as opposed to the best person that applied to the position.
And if your CEO’s opinion doesn’t do it, think about this: If you use a recruiter, you get to compare candidates that apply to the position with those that a recruiter brings in. This should reassure you that you’re getting the best candidate available, not just the best that happened to come across your posting and apply.
Saving time
Of the 18 positons that I filled in 2015, I operated at a 2.4/1 interview to placement ratio. This means that for every 2.4 candidates I submitted to a client, one of them got hired (for reference, the national average is 7/1). Of those 18 placements, seven of them were filled by only submitting one candidate.
If you want to spend your time thumbing through 50+ resumes trying to track down that perfect fit, I’m not your guy. I’m here to make your life easier by sending over 1-3 extremely specific candidates that match the exact profile you need in the role.
At the end of the day, success in many Demand Generation positions is easily measured by the numbers. Whether by pipeline, leads, conversions, or revenue, it’s generally easy to tell if you hired a superstar, or if you’ve simply filled the chair with a warm body.
–> For instant access to Versique’s blogs, great career how-to articles, and industry trends, follow us on Twitter at @Versique and on LinkedIn!
