The employees we want are not looking for work!
With every search, Headhunters use their network to hunt down the right people. Leveraging our relationships with over 100,000 people we have worked with is the ideal solution to finding a new General Manager, VP or Technical expert. When our networks fail and despite hundreds of outgoing calls and messages, where can we turn?
The easiest, but the worst, place to turn is Linkedin. Linkedin is used by a couple of million recruiters and salespeople, so highly-sought after people are swamped with messages. The other issue is that only about 25% of people use Linkedin on a monthly basis, it is not a good place to find 75% of people.
How do we as headhunters find the other 75% of people who do not spend time on Linkedin, and how do we engage with them to start a discussion on helping our clients? If our network can not refer us to a good potential candidate, it turns from a relationship hunt to a contact information hunt.
Contact information, ranging from an email address to a cell phone number, is difficult to find especially for people without a Linkedin profile. There are comprehensive business directory services like Zoominfo that cost over $10,000 to access, to dozens of subscription services like Signal Hire and Seekout that have cell phone numbers and sometimes social media contact information.
The ideal contact information is a cell phone number to send a short personal text message. If we can reference someone they know who we have worked with in the past, we are almost guaranteed a conversation. Relationships are built on successful connections, not on automated messages to people with whom we are looking to have a transactional relationship.
Our team just worked with a candidate for over a year to find him the perfect Manager of Facilities role. That type of relationship is something that headhunters build day in, day out, year after year. It is harder to find the right person through long-term relationships, but it gets us the 75% of people who are happy and not looking for a job, but will move for a great employer if we reach out at the right time.
Kael Campbell is President and Lead Recruiter of Red Seal Recruiting Solutions, a company providing recruitment services in mining, equipment and plant maintenance, utilities, manufacturing, construction, and transportation. When he is not recruiting, Kael spends as much time as possible with family in the great outdoors and on the water. He volunteers his time as a Board Member of the Entrepreneurs Organization of Vancouver Island. We have a wide variety of services to help you find the best employees. See how we can help on our Recruiting Solutions page.