The Fight Club Recruiting Rules!

Great talent and great hiring are about getting the best candidates to respond to your messaging. It’s our reality as talent acquisition professionals that we have candidates who apply to our jobs, some of whom might be great. We also have to go out and find great talent and find ways to get them to respond to our overtures.

It’s the number one job of every talent acquisition professional. I would argue it might be the only job of talent acquisition. Get great talent to interact with you!

The first rule of Fight Recruiting Club is you need to get candidates to respond!

The second rule of Recruiting Club is you need to keep trying to get talent to respond to you until they actually respond. Wait a second, Tim! You mean we have to reach out to a candidate more than once!? I mean, if they don’t respond to me after my first outreach, that’s their loss! No, it’s your loss! You need that talent!

The third rule of Recruiting Club is you need to interact with candidates in themedium they are most comfortable with. I like it when you text me, most people do. It gets a high response rate. Some folks like email, phone calls, Facebook messenger, handwritten notes, etc. Find all the mediums the candidate likes, not your favorite!

The fourth rule of Recruiting Club is it’s not about you. It’s about them! “I’ve got a great career opportunity for you!” How do you know what I want? Stop assuming you know what I want when you don’t. How about you first to get to know me a little. I mean, you don’t ask someone to marry you on the first date!

The fifth rule of Recruiting Club is….(there are ten in total, click through to the rest of my post over on Saba’s Blog)

4 thoughts on “The Fight Club Recruiting Rules!

  1. Awesome post Tim.
    When I tentative used ‘text’ the first time to invite a candidate to an interview, the response was insanely fast and we continued to truly connect via that media which taught me the value of Rule # 3.
    It may take a little detective work to understand which media to use for a particular candidate but once you use THEIR favorite means of communicating, life becomes so much easier for you and by doing it on their terms, you strengthen the connection.

  2. Great post Tim. My favorite is Rule 2 – constantly amazed on how many times this is a light bulb for people when I mention that a follow up is needed 1, 2, 3 or more times after the first message AND holy cow…..trying a different method of connecting (Rule 3)….WHAT? Closely followed by Rule 10 – re-learning to not fear rejection is right in line with this.

    Glad our profession does not have the the Rule of not talking about what we do.

    Josh

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