Sendouts Recruiting Software Blog

Things To Do Before You Hit Send

2010-07-28T10:07:00-05:00

Today's recruiter relies heavily on email to extend their reach and daily productivity. The problem is today's business owner, hiring manager or candidate receives a ton of emails making it increasingly difficult to get your email message across. Below I've put together a few tips to help you BEFORE you hit send and let your message fly.

Subject Line - Your subject line should be short, non-spammy (no using the words free, help, percent off or reminder) and to the point and relevant to your audience. For example, if you were pitching a job-order for an electrical engineer to a candidate list of electrical engineers then you wouldn't say Here is a new restaurant job for you, you would want to say something like New Electrical Engineering Position or Electrical Engineer Needed. You want your matches to open the email because it means something to them.

Content - Just as your subject line gets your prospect to open the email, your content needs to drive your prospect to an action. That action could be to schedule a meeting, download a whitepaper or to announce a special offer. Also, get to the point - remember your who, what, when, where and how and make sure to keep your content readable and digestible to your audience.

Creative - If you're going to use HTML in your emails, then make sure you do it right. Use the right mix of content (words) and creative (images) to make your email both attractive and functional. Use an attractive, branded header and footer and keep your emails under 630px to ensure it will display properly in most email programs. Oh, and test test test test before a large (or small) send. Use a few different email services like gmail, hotmail, yahoo and make sure to test it on email clients like Outlook 2003 and 2007. If this is over your head, you can also download tested templates that work in any email program. Just replace your content and images and voila!

Emails are an important business tool for recruiters. By mastering good pre-email send habits you'll increase your email's effectiveness once it's sent.

Finding The Time To Find Time

2010-07-16T08:55:13-05:00

For recruiters, nailing down time management is a key factor in milking the most out of your days. When interviews, emails, tasks and meetings start to pile up the results can be disastrous for your bottom-line. Having the most robust, fancy-pants ATS won't mean squat if you can't nail down your own time management. So, I've found and put together a few quick tips to help master your time and make more placements.

Prioritize - Take the non-revenue producing tasks and put them in the corner...for now. Focus on what will increase your odds of earning and let the smaller, less critical things slide. Don't start on less important things until you've ran through your high priority/high return activities.
Chunk - No I'm not talking about the Goonies character, I'm talking about chunking out time to focus. For example, 8-9am may be social media time, 9-12 you're prospecting or speaking with current clients, 1-3pm reaching out to candidates and 4-5 you're answering non-essential emails you've received throughout the day. Whatever you do all day, chunk it out into digestible pieces so it's easier to work through.
Own Your Time - You may have the best time management skills in the country, but if you're dealing with people that drag their feet or are non-responsive it won't matter. Manage other people's time by setting firm dates for meetings or getting candidates to accept offers within a certain time frame. Bill Radin shares these tips in this short video.
Say No - So your buddy in the office wants to show you the newest youtube sensation while someone else want's to vent about the jerk that cut her off this morning. Say no. Get in your zone, walk away, say you're busy closing deals and you'll watch the youtube vid on your yacht in the Hamptons this summer. Get focused and stay in your zone and don't let anyone take you out of it.

Be the owner of your time management and reap the rewards, you'll be glad you did.

Karate Chop Your Sourcing Costs

2010-07-08T09:43:00-05:00

Sourcing can be an extremely time consuming function for a busy recruiter. Finding ways to maximize your sourcing efforts, both time and quality wise, will give you a time management leg up.

Now, it's no secret that Sendouts has built-in tools to help recruiters source from major job boards, social and professional networks and literally thousands of web sources right from the application, but what I'd like to focus on today are tips any recruiter can use regardless of their ATS of choice. Using the open web and social networks to locate talent or prospect clients is a good and importantly inexpensive way to start.

Using Google to find resumes - Thanks to the indexing superiority of the world's most used search engine you can find resumes lurking on the @www. Using search strings you can hone in industry, location and skills you're looking for. For example, the simple phrase (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) will find indexed pages with the "resume" in the page title or url. You can get more complex and drill down to gold if you tweak it right. For more info check out this post on Boolean Black Belt - Great resource for open web searching and sourcing. Also, Jim Stroud posted a cool search string tool a couple years ago that allows you to drag-n-drop complex strings and find the results, check it out here.
Find company contacts on LInkedin - Linkedin recently hit 70 million users and is an excellent source to find candidates and company contacts. Linkedin provides an advanced search feature you can use to locate people in your network. You can find people by location, job title (former and current), industry, company etc... and premium members can search on more advanced filters. An example here would be searching for job title X in location X to find your target.

These are a couple, fairly basic ways to source on the cheap and I didn't go into much detail. There are great resources available online including the aforementioned Boolean Blackbelt. Of course, if you're interested in more robust and automated sourcing tools, then consider an ATS with such capabilities.

5 Business Development Tips For Recruiters

2010-07-01T10:16:00-05:00

A few months ago Sendouts produced a whitepaper called "Time to Shine: 5 Tips for Business Development During the Economic Recovery". Well, we received an incredible response from this paper mainly (in my opinion) because recruiting is and always will be a sales position. Regardless of the economy, recruiters are always in a state of developing sustainable business.

Below is a snapshot of the tips outlined in the whitepaper. To download your copy you can, click here.

Differentiate Yourself - What is the clear statement that makes you unique. In a crowded niche or market cementing existing relationships, prove your value and focus on intangibles that can set you apart.
Identify Your Target Market and Create a Plan for Reaching It - It sounds basic but many recruiters don't keep up with the market or markets that they are trying to reach. When identifying a target market you should understand who your best clients are and keep in touch frequently. Establishing a marketing rhythm can help you stay in front of mind.
Expand Your Existing Relationships - You've already done the hard work of winning a new client. Now nurture your relationships and expand your offerings to maximize the potential business and build deeper relationships with the client.
Boost Your Online Marketing Presence - Getting online and making yourself known and more importantly found is detrimental to your success. Mastering your presence online is imperative in todays on-demand climate. Some things to consider are optimizing your website for SEO, provide value with thought leadership and leverage free social media channels like twitter, facebook and linkedin.
Take a Consultative Approach - Position yourself as a trusted adviser with clients and passive candidates by identifying client/candidate pains and discussing how you have solved a similar problem. This approach allows you to showcase your recruiting knowledge, industry expertise and problem-solving ability.

Again, for the full whitepaper and a deeper dive into the tips I've shared above, please click here.

10 SEO Tips For Recruiters

2010-06-08T08:01:00-05:00

For a small business, SEO can seem like a task not worth tackling. In reality it is one of the most important things you can do to increase your visibility in an ever-crowding marketplace. Below I have compiled 10 tips taken from my own experiences and from various industry blogs and articles.

Title Tag
Meta Tags
Proper Use of Heading Tags
Alt Attributes on Images
Title Attributes on Links
XML Sitemap
Relevant Content
Link Building
Social Media

relationship building

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