3 Bad Habits Recruiters Need to Kick… Yesterday!

Many working professionals have received a message from a local recruiter, offering an “outstanding opportunity with rapid career growth for a fast-growing organization that serves fortune 500 companies.” Sorry if I sounded a little salesy there, but that’s usually how the pitch goes, right?

According to research, recruiters will speak with at least 13,000 different people annually. WOW, that comes out to just over 35 per day! Throughout all these conversations, recruiters are searching for the most viable candidates to present to hiring managers and organizations. This can make candidates feel like pawns in a fast and confusing process. Recruiters would do well to recognize this and guard against it. Here are three ways good recruiters can sound “bad.”

1. They Turn Buzzwords Into Cheesepuffs

Recruiters tend to use buzzwords on candidates as if they are an unlimited supply of cheesepuffs: cheap, not filling and of very little value. Most candidates aren’t interested in how much jargon you can rattle off in one email. While you want to catch a candidate’s attention you can’t use phrases that are inherently empty. Instead of focusing solely on the jargon that the hiring manager included in the requirement, try honing in on what makes that candidate such a great fit. It’s also useful to remember that your company may have a specific lexicon that’s not as widely known outside your industry or organization and to keep acronyms and proprietary verbiage to a minimum. If you can’t explain a job without these vernacular crutches, look to some of your competitors or even job ads written on blogs and niche sites.

2. They Call Just To Call

On average, recruiters spend 78,352 minutes on the phone per year. They make a lot of phone calls. It’s a numbers game. But because they produce such a high-volume of phone calls, there is a danger of not doing proper candidate research. If you’re struggling to find things to chat about with candidates, simply turn to the internet and the proliferation of social data available on…well everyone! Find out about a candidate’s body of work, preferred methods of communication, past projects, even work history by visiting sites like StackOverflow, Dribble, GitHub, Behance or social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook or Twitter. It’s easy to get an idea of someone’s likes and dislikes by getting a more complete picture than a resume and matching software can provide. When you pick up the phone to talk to a candidate, make it count! (Because no one likes phone calls anyway).

3. They Don’t Always Remember What Matters

Again, recruiting is a numbers game. And only the best recruiters stick around to see if a great candidate will someday be ready to accept a position in the future. Understandably, it’s about making good use of your time when you’re trying to find viable and interested candidates to present to hiring managers. But why not work the funnel?

A young recruiter once called me to pitch a sales position. I politely explained to him that I was not interested in direct sales positions, but I would be interested in future digital marketing openings. It was refreshing to have a recruiter listen so attentively…until I got a call from the same recruiter, offering me another sales position.

Great recruiters go bad when they don’t invest in even the simplest tracking or CRM tools. Many applicant tracking systems offer these record keeping capabilities and make remembering what candidates want and don’t want much easier.

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Originally posted on Recruiter.com.

photo credit: † massimo ankor via photopin cc

Maren Hogan

Maren Hogan is CEO of Red Branch and general Bad@$$

Maren Hogan is a seasoned marketer and community builder in the HR and Recruiting industry. Maren started Red Branch Media and, before she hired all the smiling faces you see below, she ran it on her own. In marketing for over 15 years, she has deep experience in strategic campaigns and a long-term, results-based operational approach.