Candidates need our services. If they didn’t, our profession would not exist and $80-90 billion wouldn’t be paid to search firms every year.
Healthcare candidates and employers need us because they have a problem of some sort that needs resolution. Fees are paid because employers cannot find the right people on their own. Candidates work through recruiters because they are not always adept at finding the right job. Recruiting is a helping profession. We change lives for the better.
Let’s take a look at these ideas made even simpler:
- Recruiters cannot meet prospects if they don’t call them
- Recruiters cannot make money unless they meet prospects
- Not all prospects have a problem to solve
- Prospects that don’t need our services are not bad, wrong, scary or evil people, they just don’t need our services TODAY
- Without ‘Introducing’ ourselves to enough people, we won’t open the doors to discover those people that do have a problem to solve
- Recruiters cannot make money if they don’t solve a problem for a prospect
Q. What kinds of problems are we solving?
A.Employment related problems
Whatever situation a prospective employer is facing in terms of personnel needs or issues with current staff, it is a problem for us to solve. Whatever things or issues that cause a candidate to consider switching jobs are the exact problems that we can remove when getting them a new one.
Recruiters are Problem Solvers
As healthcare recruiting professionals, we look for “PAIN” or problems that need to be fixed. Issues like:
- Heavy work load
- Underpaid
- Boredom
- Change in personal goals
- Lack of recognition
- Poor benefits
- Poor training
- Geographic issues
- Limited growth opportunities
- Change in a life situation
- Coworker or management conflict
- Company reorganizing
- New shift
When you think of calling someone new, think about how you are supporting a person find something opposite of whatever is driving them to listen in the first place. You are resolving something that is not quite right for them.
Serve Others
Another way to get into a positive mode about calling candidates is to shift your focus completely to your prospect. For example, move from “What’s in it for me to get a great candidate” to “How can I help this person and serve them?”
It has been shown that when you take the focus off your emotions or personal outcomes to focus on what you can do to ‘help’ another, things will happen. Good sales people understand this fact intimately.
Selling Value
Good recruiters sell the reasons it makes sense for prospects to work with them. In other words, they sell value.
We do the work for them of searching job boards and submitting resumes. This saves them unbelievable amounts of time and may even allow someone to take a look at an opportunity that simply would not have surfaced.
As the recruiter, we speak directly to the company, usually to their future boss, to get the hidden details about a position.
We negotiate on the candidate’s behalf. As the middleman a candidate and future employer are not haggling which can lead to certain difficulties.
We educate our candidates about their marketplace.
When you look at yourself as a true professional, the stigma of “cold calling” goes away. We do a lot for our candidates and it is all free (to them).
- We coach them throughout the process to up their odds of getting a job they really want
- We can point out new ways of thinking that can open doors to them
- Sometimes their fears or objections simply are not well based.
As a personal exercise, you may want to write out ten to twenty things we do for our candidates in your own words. By doing this you will be thinking it through and getting more positive in the process. This may excite you to get on phones with a positive attitude plus, once you are talking to people the things on your list will come readily to lips at appropriate moments.
Goals for Calling Candidates
In the recruiting business, almost every phone call you make has multiple purposes. Calling candidates is no exception. Try to get something from every contact you make.
Call Goals:
- To develop a relationship with a new candidate
- To build enough rapport that a ‘not hot now’ candidate can become a future potential candidate
- To set up a follow up call if they are too busy at the time of your call
- To get one or more referrals to other candidates
- To gain marketplace information
- To get leads to job openings within their own organization
Approaching an Initial Call
As you get ready to start the process of calling candidates, the first thing you will need to do is to put together a script. We call this a Candidate Presentation. It is referred to as your CP as well.
Your candidate presentation becomes your ‘road map’ so that you are sure to ”get where you need to go” in the most efficient way. Calling people without a script is like going on a trip to a strange place without a map. You will get there eventually but it takes longer and is much harder.
Since we are in a Candidate Driven Marketplace for the most part, every contact is important. As a new healthcare recruiting professional, you want to make the most of each conversation, and writing a script will keep you from “winging it.” Doing this will bring better results.
Recruiter eye opener:
Recruiters don’t ‘get’ a candidate to change jobs due to being clever. Saying to someone else that you got a non looking person to look is a stretch. Candidates that change were already primed for it, even if buried in their subconscious. Good recruiters merely facilitate it happening by bringing something hidden to the surface.