When I hear the word Blast, I think of an explosion that hits everything in site. Sure, you may be “targeting” your Blast, but it is probably with as much precision as a someone with a grenade launcher would. The general thought behind this being: “well, close is good enough”.

But is it really good enough?

I recently spoke with a recruiting manager at a Fortune 500 company that recruits sales professionals across that country. He told me that their hiring process is very selective, and that candidates must have at least a year of outside sales experience to qualify. He also informed me that they use a software program to “scrape” candidates from the job boards and “blast” thousands of emails each day. When he told about the broad search string that they use (basically “sales” with a few NOTs), it was clear to me that this was a true Email Blast hitting tons of unqualified candidates.

While this approach may save some time on the front end, consider:

• How many unqualified candidates are in these campaigns (retail sales reps/admins for a sales manager/etc)?
• How much time will their recruiters spend following up with unqualified candidates who apply?
• How many bad candidate experiences did they create for people who could be current/potential customers?
• How many legitimately qualified candidates did not apply because they were not enticed by the generic email?

Even though it takes a little more work upfront, CareerPlug believes that the best results happen when you limit the campaign to the qualified candidates that you would want to interview. This allows you to:

1. Attract more qualified candidates by focusing your message and truly engaging your target audience.
2. Save your recruiters’ time and make it easy for them to identify candidates who are worth additional attention.
3. Avoid wasting the time of candidates who are not qualified for this position. Remember, they may be your customers.

In summary, save the blasts for cannons and space shuttles, and please keep them out of your email campaigns.

We’ve worked very hard at CareerPlug to come up with a solution to this problem.

Target Qualified Candidates
It may sound obvious, but its important! If a job seeker is looking for an outside, B2B sales job with base salary and commission, sending him an e-mail about a career in customer service isn’t going to encourage him to check back later to apply. But, if we send Joe an e-mail about an outside, B2B sales position with a growing company, he’s more likely to remember!

Concise, Informative e-mails
Even if you’re at a computer you don’t want to ready a wordy e-mail. But, if you’re out and about, why would a job seeker waste his or her time reading a 500 word e-mail?  E-mails should be concise. By highlighting why Joe is a good fit and why this is a great opportunity, we’ve both informed him about the job and kept from boring him with a wordy e-mail. He’s informed without being bored and even more encouraged to remember to apply.

Call to action
How would he remember to apply if we didn’t’ ask in the fist place?! A strong call to action in the end of the e-mail will reinforce that he needs to come back to this e-mail later when he can focus on the opportunity and apply directly on his employer-branded microsite.

With the ability to check e-mail almost anywhere, it can be a while between the time somebody receives an e-mail from CareerPlug and when they are finally able to sit behind a computer and apply. Getting them interested and excited about the opportunity and following with a strong call to action makes sure that we don’t lose our mobile-savvy job seekers!

Here are a few tips on successful phone recruiting:

1. Get in the right mindset- As recruiters, our approach can sometimes come off as more of a sales pitch than a job offer. Remember to put yourself in the other person’s shoes.  You don’t want to feel like you’re being solicited and neither do they. Remember you have a real opportunity to share and open the conversation with that in mind.
2. Focus on building a strong rapport first-  Mirroring a candidates conversational tone and even the loudness and speed of their speech will help them feel more connected to you.  This is a quick way to get someone to open up.
3. Remember- As Dale Carnegie will tell you, people love talking about themselves- If you want someone to talk, just listen. Well ask a question first, and then listen.  You may lean something that’s not on paper. Getting a candidate to open up and discuss his/her own career objectives can save everyone time. Often the things you learn from simply talking to an individual give you a lot more information than what’s written on their resume.

These tips aren’t going to seal the deal every time, but they sure will help you to open a few more doors and have a few less hang-ups.

Indeed, finding A-level talent is not an easy task, but CareerPlug’s high-volume recruiting model can take that burden away. Rather than typical sales recruiting, CareerPlug sources candidates from multiple outlets. Aside from sourcing active candidate markets, CareerPlug also focuses on all the major Social Media outlets.

Using Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and especially LinkedIn, CareerPlug is able to find A-level candidates who rely more on networking to find job opportunities than job boards.

Once candidates have been sourced by the CareerPlug Talent Specialists, a targeted e-mail campaign sent out to each candidate directs them to a personalized micro-site containing their job posting. As CareerPlug already has the candidate’s resume on file, all candidates have to do is simply double check their contact information and click submit – making career transitions easier and less stressful.

Once candidates express interest, the Talent Specialist team dives significantly deeper into the resumes to confirm that the interested candidates fit not only the requirements set by our clients, but really stand out as A-Level Candidates.

If Adler’s estimation that an A-Level candidate can bring a financial gain of 10-100 times his or her salary, how much money could CareerPlug help make you?

In his article, Picoult wrote about a story of a manager from Nabisco who, when at an HR industry conference, shocked the audience by stating that his company responded to each and every resume they received.  When a dumbfounded peer asked why on earth the company did this, the manager responded, “Because- everyone eats cookies.”

This response struck a chord.  It made me think about CareerPlug and our approach to communicating with candidates.  I can happily say that we are no-doubt, a company who recognizes that “everyone eats cookies.”  In fact, our specialty is personalization.  Everyone wants to feel they’ve been heard, so we make sure that happens; it’s less a rule of business but rather a simple gesture of kindness and human decency. As soon as we know the status of a candidate, they are notified, within moments. This concept of attentive correspondence seems to have slipped through the cracks within the industry.

So, if very few recruiters are doing it these days…does that make us in style? I think it does.  Personalization is the new black.

Here’s the original post and my response:
Original Post:
I have a friend who has a 90-day deadline to fill 150 positions based on a government contract in her new position with a healthcare company. The contract is based on 150 hires (100 call/claim and various support staff, 25 nurses and 25 other mgmt/supervisory roles.) Does anyone know where she should start? She has done recruiting before, but not this many positions at the same time. I told her I would ask this experienced and talented group!

My Response:
Sheila,

I would recommend that your friend approach this challenge from a marketing perspective.

For each position type, she should develop a strategy to:
1) Build multiple channels to generate candidate leads.

2) Drive these candidates to a website where they can explore the opportunity, assess their candidacy, and register for a hiring event.

3) Conduct hiring events that streamline the process for reviewing a high volume of applicants.

Here are the lead generation channels that I would consider:
– Job postings on major/niche boards (+ craigslist)
– Email campaigns to candidates within job board databases
– Post on the job search engines (Indeed, SimplyHired)
– Pay-per-click ads on Google
– Employee referrals (if applicable)
– PR (local news will certainly cover this)
*Note – she may need a different approach for the nurses since the active candidate market for them is relatively weak

As for the landing page website (or microsite), it should be simple, yet informative. As part of the application form, she may want to include some pre-screen questions (“Do you have at least 2 years of call center experience?”) and an option to register for a specific hiring event. We use personalized microsites for our outbound email campaigns and general microsites for our inbound candidates – both work really well.

With the hiring events, I would try to get as much done there as possible (including phone simulations and computer literacy tests for call center candidates). Beware that if you publicize the event on the local media (instead of directing viewers to a website), you may get an overwhelming turnout which could result in negative press.

Please feel free to have your friend contact me if she would like some additional advice on high-volume recruiting.

Good luck!
Clint