Modeled after Pinterest, Weddles.com offers four channels of information and resources found nowhere else on the Web. And, one of those channels is specifically tailored for those Employers and Recruiters who are determined to find the best talent for their openings!
What’s in the Employers & Recruiters channel at Weddles.com? There are:
- Books & Tools for recruiting & sourcing excellence
- An archive of Next Practice Recruiting Tips
- An Association Directory organized by career field & industry
- Insights on Career Activists – the passive prospects who are so hard to recruit
- And much, much more!
So, make Weddles.com the place where you start your business day! And, encourage your colleagues to join you there, as well.
Next Practice: Socratic Email
We do it all the time. We find a great prospect for a key opening and send off an email message to start our recruiting conversation. More often than not, however, all that comes back is the sound of silence. The conversation never begins because we haven’t structured the message to stimulate a reply. We haven’t used the Socratic method.
Email may seem old fashioned in these days of social media, but the research shows it’s still the preferred method of online communication. In a survey of 1,100 association members – people who are committed to improving themselves in their profession or what we colloquially call “A” and “B” level performers – the majority reported that they prefer to be contacted by email.
Among all of the survey’s respondents, 89 percent said they favored email, while just 8 percent favored social media. And in the cohort of respondents thought to be most committed to social media – those 24 to 34 years of age – the numbers were almost the same. An astonishing 87 percent said they favored email, while 13 percent gave the nod to social media.
Given this preference for email contacts, it’s critical that we understand how best to structure such messages to ensure they are successful. What’s the definition of success? It has two components:
and
Getting Prospects to Answer the Mail
The most effective recruiting email messages have three components:
A Personal Greeting. The email must begin with a salutation that addresses the recipient by name. The best talent abhor being treating as if they are a generic candidate, so such greetings as “Hi There” or “Dear Colleague” are an immediate ticket to the virtual dumpster. Instead, do your homework, learn the person’s first name and begin your message with that. Simple as it sounds, using “Hi Jim” or Hello Jane” helps to establish you as a peer rather than yet another vendor trying to sell them something.
A Value Statement. The best talent are never interested in a job, but most are always on the lookout for a career advancement opportunity. So, don’t use a bureaucratic job title or position description to introduce your opening. And, don’t use words – such as Requirements and Responsibilities – that only an employer could love. Instead, focus on describing “what’s in it for them.” Tell them what they will get to do, what they can learn, what they will be able to accomplish, whom they will work with and how they will be recognized and rewarded.
A Socratic Trigger. Our culture teaches people that it’s impolite to ignore a question. So, stimulate a reply by ending your message with one. It won’t work with every prospect, of course, but it will induce many to reply to your first message and then to every message after that. In your first message, keep your value statement short and sign off by asking if they would like to know more. Then, in subsequent messages, add more detail and ask them if such an opportunity would be right for them at this point in their career or if they feel as if their current job lacks such challenge and rewards. And, then, keep asking until they hear what they need in order to apply.
This iterative messaging based on questions from you and answers from the prospect is a version of Socratic learning. It educates the message recipient by getting them to tell you what they want (or need) to know. As a result, it transforms the interaction from a sales pitch into a quasi-counseling or coaching experience that will help them see you as a colleague and your opening as an opportunity they can’t pass up.
Thanks for Reading,
Peter
Visit me at Weddles.com
Next Practices – The Book
Best Practices are so yesterday! They are sourcing and recruiting techniques designed for a time that has passed.
Next Practices are strategies and tactics for winning the real War for the Best Talent – the one you actually face today and will face tomorrow. They modernize your approach to:
- Recruitment Advertising
- Social Recruiting
- Candidate Engagement
- Optimizing the Candidate Experience
- Managing Your Own Recruiting Career
so you maximize your success.
The book is composed of short, straight-to-the-point essays that can be read in ten or fifteen minutes and still transport you to a whole new dimension in the state-of-the art for recruiting and sourcing talent. With titles like Become a Talent Whisperer, Post-Social Recruiting, The Inconvenient Truth of Recruiting and Don’t Post a Job, Advertise Respect, they are sure to entertain and enlighten you.
So, don’t recruit with yesterday’s techniques. Get Next Practices and start recruiting right now with the next generation of recruiting mastery.
The book is available on Amazon. Click here to place your order.
What’s Happening In the Job Market?
Despite all the happy talk about the growth in job openings, it’s still incredibly hard to find a GOOD job and one that pays anywhere near what it costs to live in this country. That’s as true for recruiters as it is for everyone else in the workforce.
So, what’s going on?
There are plenty of talking heads opining on cable and more than enough blog posts and magazines offering their take on the situation. But, wouldn’t it be nice to look into this situation and its causes without having to endure a lot of self-appointed punditry?
Well, now you can. Read Peter Weddle’s novel about the 21st Century world of work in America called A Multitude of Hope. It uses the fictional tale of three job seekers to explore what’s happening to individual working men and women in a workplace and job market churning with change.
To read a FREE excerpt of A Multitude of Hope, click here.
The Recruiting Resources You Deserve
The best recruiters use the best resources to get the job done. And, when it comes to reaching top talent online, their choice is clear. It’s WEDDLE’s Books. Get yours today!
WEDDLE’s Guide to Employment Sites on the Internet. This is the 11th edition of the Guide the American Staffing Association called the “Zagat” of job boards and social media sites.
The Talent Sourcing & Recruitment Handbook. This is Shally Steckerl’s tell-all guide to his sourcing secrets and cybersleuthing for hard-to-find talent.
WEDDLE’s Guide to Association Web Sites. This book details the recruiting resources and capabilities that are available at the Web-sites of over 3,000 professional and technical associations.
Finding Needles in a Haystack. This one-of-a-kind guide lists over 25,000 keywords and keyword phrases, across 5,400 job and position titles in 28 industries and professions.