The Undercover Recruiter

Why Hard Closes are Bad for Your Business and Your Karma

I don’t think profit is a dirty word, I think it’s dirty when it is at the expense of others. The old capitalist rule of someone making a profit means someone is losing is not something I can get behind. I also think that certain things shouldn’t have a profit or free market associated with it at all. I don’t feel that’s true about our chosen business, that of recruiting. I am offering a service, based on both my expertise and my time put in. The value is an arbitrary number but I know what I offer is intangible, as well, so there you have it.

I pride myself on being honest with my clients and candidates, and providing the good, the bad and the ugly; I want to be a Trusted Advisor to all parties. I want to offer what are opportunities not just jobs. I want to offer my clients the best candidates and not just paper with skills listed. [Read more...]

Jeff Newman

Jeff Newman a.k.a. The People's Recruiter, has been a Full Life Cycle IT Recruiter and Full Desk Placement expert for over 14 years. He prides himself on always making sure that what he is offering a candidate is an Opportunity and not just another job. He is always honest about the pluses and minuses and tries to not just be a recruiter but a career adviser. He is a Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist at Mobiquity in NYC.

Filed Under: Recruitment Tagged With: bad, Business, closes, hard, head hunting, recruitment

How to Start Your Own Recruitment Business

My name is Adam Bolton, and until recently I worked for a recruitment agency – I’d been there for almost 8 years, but I wanted something more. I wanted to be able to provide more for my children (both in monetary and daddy time!), and decided that the best way for me to do that would be to start up on my own.

I’ve decided to write a series of blogs that will (hopefully) take me through the first year of AB Recruit. In this, the first instalment I would like to share with you how I have set up the business, and what you may expect from the initial period. [Read more...]

Adam Bolton

Adam Bolton is a Technical Recruiter for AB Recruit Ltd who specialises in recruiting for .Net developers. If you would like to get in touch with Adam feel free to leave a comment below and/or tweet him at @ABRecruitLtd.

Filed Under: Recruitment Tagged With: Business, Company, own, recruitment

How Small Talk Can Win Or Lose You Clients

cricket and recruitment

Dog Walking, Art & Yorkshire Cricket…

Over the years I’ve found certain ways to mitigate those awkward opening small talk exchanges that occur when we meet new clients for the first time. One simple and obvious way is by doing some basic company research before hand so I can comment on recent news etc. Another is to look up the contact’s Linkedin profile and acquaint myself with their career history or what updates they have recently shared. Even better if they have a blog or twitter account as this is manna from heaven for finding something to talk about.

Another way I sometimes break the ice is by commenting upon interesting items in the room as way to begin a conversation and build rapport. Last year this methodology worked for me very effectively twice in a row but the third time it got me in to one of those horrible hope-the-ground-swallows me moments. Here’s what happened.

Meeting number one took place with a HR Director who I noticed had a considerable amount of photos of a dog on her shelves. As we’d just got our first family dog and the novelty of cold rainy walks before bedtime hadn’t worn off yet this was a great subject to start chatting about. Pretty soon we were swapping doggy owner tips and anecdotes.

Meeting number two was with a CEO of major financial services company and his office was festooned with works of art that were not the usual corporate flat print types. Luckily I was on familiar ground with this subject as I studied History of Art at university. Commenting upon his Barbara Hepworths got me in to a great conversation with the CEO and it turned out he too had a keen interest in this area and his wife and daughters were all striving artists and collectors.

Meeting number three was where my small talk strategy all went wrong. This meeting was with the inimitable millionaire Yorkshireman Colin Graves. At the time Colin was the owner of Costcutter, the supermarket chain he started in 1986 and later sold in 2012, and he was also Chairman of Yorkshire Cricket Club.

Naturally an obvious opening gambit was to discuss the fortunes of that famous cricket club that is so dear to every true Yorkshireman’s heart: “Hello Colin, I see from all the photographs that cricket is an important part of your life. How’s your season been?”

What followed was a silence I can only describe as deafening. Mr Graves fixed me with a stare that would perhaps have even quailed Sir Geoff of Boycott OBE in his crease during his pomp and boomed back – “Bloody crap! Bloody Lancashire won the bloody championship; whilst we were bloody relegated!”

I have never felt like such stupid southerner trespassing on God’s own county. Needless to say the rest of meeting following this opening small talk didn’t really go well and I’ve not been asked back.

Moral of the story? Don’t try to be too clever by half, always do your research before a meeting and avoid attempting to wing-it about subjects you know little about; especially when it’s discussing cricket with a Yorkshireman.

photo by: barryskeates

Robert Wright

Robert Wright is a Soft Southerner hiding in the North who likes to hire interesting people for interesting companies. Find him on Linkedin or follow his Twitter account @robmwright.

Filed Under: Business, Recruitment Tagged With: agency, agent, Business, clients, cricket, recruitment, Sales, small talk, talk, yorkshire

What is an Appropriate Email Greeting?

As a follow-up to my last post about email etiquette, I started going through my emails to look at the first line or salutation. As an example, by salutation you might write ‘Dear’ when you write a letter or send a card. As emails are short and to the point, they don’t always lend themselves to that of formal greeting.

How do you open your emails?

I’m curious to know how you open your emails to a client and/or a prospective employer? This is a question I struggle with all the time – balancing the business and personal relationships I’ve developed. I’ve used everything from ‘Dear’ to ‘Good morning/afternoon/evening.’

From my experience on the receiving end of emails it seems apparent that fewer people begin these notes with “Dear” or something along those lines. The tone seems to be more informal than I’d prefer to see or be the recipient of in a business setting.

I see ‘Hello’ or ‘Hi’ most often and these greetings seem a bit too friendly for me. In some cases the ‘Hello’ isn’t followed with my name which is a red flag that this email is SPAM-like.

What about job application emails?

I suspect that job seekers struggle with this question differently than small business owners do. You don’t want to come across the wrong way or insincere but ‘tone’ isn’t easily determined in an email.

Dear, Hey or Hi?

I see the friendly tone in many emails as a function of our busy, digital world. “Dear,” which always looked fine on a business letter or a handwritten note, is increasingly seen as archaic and old-fashioned on a computer screen, smartphone or mobile device.

It also seems that many young professionals are using, “Hey” or even worse text message lingo and emoticons. ‘Hey’ or ‘Hi’ may be fine for friends but, in my opinion, is not appropriate when responding to a professional or business email.

Avoid templates please

Many emails I get are probably from a ‘template’ and they include a greeting like ‘Hi.’ I’d suspect these exact emails were probably sent to hundreds of others besides me with no thought to specific content. If that’s the case, why bother sending it?

Let me know what you think

I don’t think there’s one right or wrong answer as we each have different comfort levels based on our own experiences. I’d be interested in hearing how you feel about this. I realize that the person sending the email (recruiter vs. senior management) will answer this question, differently.

Etiquette should never go out of style, and ‘busy’ shouldn’t be an excuse.

Do you agree?

photo by: thetaxhaven

Kenneth Lang

Kenneth Lang is a social media analyst who has worked with job seekers and small business owners on how to best maximize using LinkedIn for specific goals. He’s worked for large and small companies, most recently as Online Project Management Support for The New York Times in New York City on the International version of the newspaper – The International Herald Tribune. Kenneth is co-founder of Steps To Success which offers individual and group LinkedIn sessions for business owners.

Filed Under: Etiquette, Job Search Tagged With: Business, Email, email etiquette, emails, job seekers, recruiters