In this episode, we discuss how to find new clients, reach out to them, and what to say on the call.
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Here are the show notes:
why do companies work with recruiters at all?
Most of the companies in America can be described as small-mid level companies, meaning that they have 5 - 200 employees.
Regardless of the industry, every company comes to a point where they have hard to fill positions.
Most companies will typically try to fill positions by themselves, but after 4 or 5 months go by with that position vacant, they are quite literally losing money.
This is typically when they become open to working with third-party recruiters or an agency.
The the cost of that empty position becomes so great, that they are willing to pay a large fee in order to fill it.
That’s where we come in.
So, how do you find these companies looking to hire?
The easiest place to find companies to hire is job boards.
This will be places like indeed, monster, careerbuilder, zip recruiter, etc.
And it typically lists the company hiring as well
Another way to find companies hiring is by funding rounds
My favorite site to use for this is crunchbase.com
Crunchbase lists companies who recently received funding, and the funding amount, which can be anywhere between 500k to millions or even billions of dollars
There are dozens of companies every day that receive funding
The final way to find companies hiring is from speaking to candidates themselves
i’ll typically ask candidates where they are interviewing on our calls
9 times out of 10 they tell me.
I can then reach out to those companies in confidence that they are hiring
Once you know a company is hiring then all you need to do is find a hiring manager
You can do this on linkedin by searching for the company and finding the employees
The hiring manager will be the director or VP in the same department as the position that is open
If it’s a smaller company, they may not have a director or vp, so it may be the owner to CXO
What I’ll typically do is connect with them or find their email and send a personalized message offering to help fill the role
What to do on the phone call
Typically the job order call is pretty straightforward
I’ve found that most tough-to-fill jobs boil down to 3-4 skills
So I’ll try to find those 3-4 must have skills, and then 3-4 “nice to have” thing
If they have too many things listed, I will tell them “I don’t think this person actually exists”
Part of what we do as recruiters is set expectations - when people are hiring, sometimes they want way too much and it’s your job to push back and find out “what are they really looking for.
Finding this out can be the difference between time well spent or time wasted; and eventually is the difference between a 5-figure paycheck or nothing.
So it’s important you get clear with the hiring manager on their expectations
Once you have those 3-4 must haves, clarify other important details. This includes:
Salary
Benefits
Stock
401k
New position or backfill
How soon do they need to fill the role?
Have they already started interviewing?
What’s your interview process? Do i send these people directly to you?
Last thing to discuss is fee agreement
I will typically ask if they have worked with recruiters before and if they know how it works
Most the time they say yes
If no, I tell them “okay, it’s free to view resumes and even interview candidates, we work on contingency and only get paid if you hire on of our candidates and charge 20% of the candidates base salary.”
Now you can go higher- sometimes I start at 25% and if they want to negotiate me down we can go from there, but I will almost never take less than 20%. I know our service is worth at least that much.
Once they’ve agreed I will send over the fee agreement for signing.
