Don't Be A Recruitment Lemming

: Published on Friday, 04 November 2011 14:19

By Terry Edwards

Follow @terrythecoach

Have you ever noticed that to succeed in life, you need to do the exact OPPOSITE of what the masses are doing?

If you don’t believe me, take a look at the cold, hard facts.

Lets take a look at your health. According to the masses you have a 1 in 2 chance of dying of heart disease, a 1 in 3 chance of dying of cancer and a 4 in 5 chance of being overweight.

With regards to intimate relationships the masses say that you have a 1 in 2 chance of a first divorce and if you marry again, a 3 in 4 chance of a second divorce!

And if you model the masses with regards to finance, you are in BIG trouble! Because you have a 19 in 20 chance of retiring without enough to live on, this includes support from your family, friends or the state.

As for the masses in recruitment, well consider this. Just 18% of recruitment businesses have 80% of the entire recruitment market.

The fact is, you’d be better off looking at whatever the masses are doing and then do the exact opposite. And there is nowhere this is more true than with growing your recruitment business. Let’s be honest here, most recruitment business owners are former consultants and if you do what the masses are doing you will get what the masses have:

- Being the cheapest – HIGHLY INEFFECTIVE
– Only getting business through cold calling- OUTDATED AND INFERIOR

But let’s take a look at the top 18%.

Did you know that Barack Obama raised half a billion dollars online in his 21 months campaign for the White House, dramatically ushering in a new digital era in presidential fundraising? Obama’s email list contains upwards of 13 million addresses. Over the course of the campaign, aides sent more than 7,000 different messages. Over that same period his team sent 2077 voice messages. Obama and his team acknowledged that it was important that they communicated and started relationships with voters.

Yet just the other day a recruitment business owner told me that email marketing would not work for recruiters. This was from a man who has never used email marketing and is doing what the majority of recruitment business owners do i.e., just cold calling.

The reality is the successful 18% of recruitment business owners acknowledge that the world has changed virtually beyond recognition in the last 10 years (i.e., Facebook (’04), YouTube (’05), iPods (’01), 9/11 (Bush ’01-’09), credit crunch (’07-’10)) and are generating business and growing their recruitment business using these tools. Despite this the masses are still making those cold calls and in most cases wasting their time as the people that they are calling are not interested in their recruitment service.

I’m not saying that cold calling doesn’t work for recruiters, but just for a minute imagine that you were also using the 14 other methods for acquiring clients and each method generated only 10 leads per month. This would generate 140 leads per month. What would that be worth to you and your team?

The fact of the matter is this:

If you don’t get with the program and adopt the new paradigm of how to market your recruitment business and attract clients in 2012, you might as well give up and go and get yourself a J.O.B. (just over broke).

You need to discover:

- Internet marketing
- Capturing leads from your website
- Social media
- Becoming a “key person of influence”
- Pay Per Click on Google and LinkedIn
- how to build a database
- Systemising referrals
- Email marketing
- Skype marketing

But out of all of them, the most important is building a database of potential clients who have a need for your recruitment service, and building a relationship with them.

Do what successful recruitment business owners do and you will get what successful recruitment business owners have.

Wishing you continued success,

Terry Edwards