So here I am, now CIO for an ISP/managed hosting company, and I occasionally recruit staff. It’s never an easy process – apart from finding the right skills, I have to find the right cultural fit, the right attitude and so on. Some recruiters make this easy and do a great job. Those are the people I use. I’ve used them across 2,3 or even 4 companies, recruiting all sorts of technical, BA and PM roles.
Inevitably, I get cold-called from my LinkedIn profile by other recruiters, or from times when I’ve contacted them – maybe to apply for a role myself. It’s these companies who are the target for the advice I give freely here.
Do comment and let me know your experiences too!
So, to my pearls of wisdom:
- If you got my name from your CV database, and your records show you didn’t call me back, or email me back, or respond to my enquiry, DO NOT BOTHER TO CALL ME. You are on my “do not deal with” list. Contrary to what your ego is now telling you, this is not personal pique. If that’s how you treated me as a candidate, that’s how you’ll treat the candidates for roles I’m recruiting. I don’t want to be tarred with your brush.
- If you got my name from LinkedIn, and my profile doesn’t say that I’m recruiting and inviting CVs from recruiters, I will just delete your email. If you find my number and call, I will politely listen to you, then ignore anything you’ve said. This is simply because if you can’t read my LinkedIn profile, you can’t read a job spec or a CV. While I’m at it, don’t link to be on LinkedIn until we’ve done business. It’s even more desperate than people with 10,000 Facebook “friends”.
- When you ask me what my company does, you’ve just ruled yourself out. There’s a link to my company web site on LinkedIn. Use it. Trust me, you won’t sell anything to anybody unless you understand what they do and what they’re likely to be looking for.
- So you specialise in technical recruiting? Please learn why Solaris is not the same as Ubuntu, or why MySQL is not Postgres (or worse, SQL Server). Oh, and a CCNA doesn’t mean a candidate “knows all about networks”, sorry. You earn your fees by understanding this and filtering CVs, not by being a mail relay.
- If you send me a six line email with over 900K of clever graphical signature, it’s getting deleted. I have one in my inbox now. Click. Now I don’t. That was strangely satisfying.
So that was five tips. Here’s a bonus tip. Bet you won’t read it….
I worked for a great manager in my last role. His mantra was that the number one job of any manager is to recruit the right team, not just a bunch of skilled individuals. As a recruitment company, if you haven’t met me or my hiring managers, you have NO hope of sending the right candidates to me. THAT’s why I have built long-lasting relationships with a limited number of recruiters, and unless you can be bothered to figure our my company, my team and me you won’t get on my list of trusted partners.
Because the guys I use are just that.