How To Snatch a Contract Employee : Ten Easy Tips

I’ll be the first one to acknowledge that grazing on Monster.com resumes all day every day is a horrid, horrid job duty. However, if you’re a recruiter at a placement agency, keep in mind a couple of things to get that talent hired:

1. Don’t expect a candidate to pick up the phone. There’s a good chance they’re working during the day.
2. Don’t expect a candidate to call you back. For every publicized job, a qualified candidate might hear from fifteen or twenty different agencies in three days.
3. Leave a voice mail explaining that you’ll email details of the contract position. You might be a phone person, but there’s a good chance that your candidate isn’t. By supplying an email with the details in it, you’re giving the candidate time to mull over the opportunity and respond with well formed sentences and coherent thoughts, which, of course, is opposite of a people person. The phone call isn’t even really necessary except to let them know there’s an interest and to make sure your email doesn’t end up in the spam pile.
4. Don’t be audially pushy. Yes, it’s a weird way to express this phenomenon: A recruiter calls twice a day every day for a week, just trying to get some contact. The candidate is working during the hours the recruiter calls and so forwards the call to voicemail. The candidate calls back after business hours, but the recruiter is gone. Then, at the end of the week, the candidate has ten voice mails and no written communication from a recruiter who keeps saying the same thing over and over again. It’s not pretty. Now, multiply this by the fifteen or twenty different agencies.
5. Use the email. Candidates who might be currently working may be able to check personal email within the cubicle confines; this is not the case with a phone call. Emails allow free-flowing communication between the recruiter and the candidate without divulging any personal information to the cubicle walls…which may put a current job in jeopardy, regardless of the outcome.
6. If you want to fill a position bad enough, you will make yourself available after 5 PM.
7. Be different. If you think fifteen other agencies are hiring for this position, you need to sweeten the deal. Sometimes little things make a big difference, like contract completion bonuses, work from home options, hardware, software, flex shifts, parking spots, driving out of the sun versus into the sun, paid parking, health insurance, dental insurance, retirement plans/savings deferment options, referral bonuses, and long-term working relationships. If you want to nurture a long-term working relationship with a contract candidate, consider maintaining weekly contact with him; tell him corporate news; describe how you’re helping him find his next contract; suggest skills training that would help him along the way, and how you’ll pay half.
8. When you say you’ll keep them in mind for other opportunities, keep them in mind for other opportunities. Name recognition is much like branding; when they’re looking for work or when they have friends who are looking for work, you want that name recognition at the top of their minds. I know you’re busy, but it’d be worth a short lead list and personal weekly email to that lead list for you to have a pool of candidates that will follow you to whichever agency you choose.
9. When you say you’ll keep them in mind for other opportunities, they know you’re full of bullshit. You lose credibility unless you follow through.
10. Be first. It’s a cutthroat industry.

Finding Candidates Outside of Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com: Ten Places You Never Thought To Look

1. Ask your current contractors. Hence, the newsletter.
2. Ask questions and post jobs on LinkedIn. This is such an overlooked avenue.
3. Craigslist. Don’t be cute, just put the job title in the title; otherwise, you must be in a pyramid scheme. Make sure you give all the details you can.
4. Local Interest and Hobby Groups: If you need a programmer who work in Linux, try the RedHat support group. If you need a designer, try the Arts Association. Better yet, join it so you can get some credibility.
5. Talk to your personal insurance agent. If anyone know the gossip, it’s the office staff who works for him.
6. Make an arrangement with a local resume-writing service. Ask around to find out who the resume aficionados in the area are, and talk to them about finding candidates. People only work on resumes when they’re looking for work.
7. Colleges. Check with job placement boards and meet with professors and GTAs in the fields in which you’re hiring. Frequently they’ll make announcements in class and might pass out cards.
8. Other recruiters. Have you contemplated sub-sub-sub contracting? Maybe the two can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement.
9. Barnes & Noble. People hang out in the stores that interest them. “Hi, I’m Joe Recruiter, I work for Agency, here’s my card, please call me about a C# position.” Then walk away. Any more words than that and you must be in a pyramid scheme.
10. Ask your teenage babysitter. Offer her a cut. She knows which kids’ parents are unemployed and what they do for a living. Or her friends will. Or she’ll pass it to her friends for a cut.