I asked a star Java candidate recently how many phone calls he receives from recruiters in a week. He said it’s usually about 10 a day, which is a staggering amount of calls in a week!
If you are one of the lucky recruiters to talk to a candidate like this live, you have a short amount of time to attract the candidate’s attention. The compensation, location, or responsibilities of your job opening have to be very appealing, or it will be a (very) short and unproductive call – for both of you.
Once you have a great role to offer a star candidate…and a star candidate to offer your company, speed is key. Follow these top 5 steps to ensuring you keep things moving quickly, and offer the best possible scenario to both your candidate and your client.
1. Keep your candidate’s attention. If you do your job well and grab a star candidate’s attention over the phone, it’s time to act quickly. Recruiters need to e-mail candidates a job description and ask candidates when they are available for a phone interview during the initial call.
2. Help your client act quickly. The next step for recruiters is to convey to their client company on how quickly they need to move if they want to hire the candidate. Most companies can quickly set up a time for an initial phone interview, and have plans in place to move candidates from hiring manager interviews to offers quickly. Nothing impresses star candidates more than companies who are able to move through the hiring process quickly.
3. Understand your candidate’s intentions. Companies that take more than 48 hours to get back to recruiters with feedback on a candidate, stand the chance of losing that candidate because star candidates talk to prospective companies in bunches. Once candidates fall in love with the potential of a new job, they contact companies that have been interested in them in the past to make sure they are making the best decision.
4. Build relationships through face-time (and phone-time). Face-to-face is better. One of the best services recruiters provide is feedback from phone conversations and in-person meetings. It’s more difficult to build trust with candidates and companies if most of the conversations are through e-mails or social media. Recruiters gain valuable information based on how quickly candidates and companies call back, and how the tone of the conversations goes.
5. Make the call. Ultimately, the best advice in this tight IT job market is to continue to make phones calls to star candidates rather than only communicating through e-mails and social media. It will help your candidates and clients make a hiring decision before your star candidate’s shelf life expires.
Content provided by Joe Janasz
