Why recruiters should nurture their candidates

Simon Lewis recently wrote an interesting blog post called “Recruiters: treat your candidates like a good neighbour, or die“.  Obviously we’re not taking the title at face value – it was actually about how recruiters should nurture their “talent pools” to ensure they “thrive in the new recruiting dawn”.

You can read the whole thing on his blog but he has given me permission to pick out this section of questions you should ask yourself to see if you are treating your candidates right in order to keep them on side:

When was the last time you contacted your community? This needn’t be a phone call (although this is best) because these days there’s social networking to get messages out, which would, of course, be great if you can answer this in the affirmative.

When was the last time you hung out with your jobseekers on Facebook; or what did your last Twitter message say to encourage your marketing folk to keep following you; or how many relevant connections do you have on LinkedIn and do you send them regular, relevant, status updates?

Clearly you cannot meet all your prospects but how many social events do you attend, from which you can a) meet candidates you’ve placed and b) engage with new candidates – possibly your next placement? Sharing a drink goes a long way.

Do you contact applicants who may not be relevant for the role they’ve applied for but are possibly suited for something in the future? Given the recent rise in job applications (relevant and irrelevant) it’s not expected that you contact everyone but courtesy is a virtue.

Do you offer referral rewards to your community? If someone you know recommends someone you didn’t and they fill your vacancy, do you offer anything to the referrer? It needn’t be much but a bottle of champagne, for example, will be remembered.

When was the last time you sent a candidate a piece of advice or an article you thought they might find interesting – for no immediate gain?

Recruitment is about lots of things, ability to sell, understanding how to “read” people, empathy, negotiation skills, etc.  But it’s basically about relationships and if you don’t have a good one with your candidates then you have half the placement puzzle missing!