The 5 Major Tasks That Recruiters Perform on a Daily Basis

There are five major tasks that we as recruiters perform on a daily basis—and they all have to do with picking up the telephone!

#1—We are marketers.

We make daily marketing, or sales, calls.  It is our first key to success.  In the immortal words of the famous Sidney Boyden, who founded Boyden Associates in 1946 (as quoted in The Headhunters by John A. Byrne):

“When I employed an associate, I was interested in a man who could be a business getter and a merchandiser.  I was looking for widely acquainted, top sales executives.  Because the ability to go out and promote business and get business is more important than finding the men.  I was least interested in somebody who would know how to track down a man and find him.”

#2—We are recruiters.

We recruit for a living.  That means we find prospective recruits who are happy, well-appreciated, making good money, and currently working, and we entice them to move for better opportunities (i.e., our search assignment-quality job orders).  We don’t work with job-hoppers, job-shoppers, or rejects.

#3—We are discriminators (in a positive sense).

We are especially selective of our job orders, only choosing the best, search assignment quality job orders on which to spend our straight-commission time.  These JOs fall into the following three distinct categories:

1. Those JOs that have a tremendous urgency attached to filling the position. We are often paid to circumvent the time factor.
2. Those JOs that are very difficult positions to fill.  This is where our client companies have run ads, offered referral bonuses to their employees, checked with competitors, consulted with colleagues, and extensively interviewed with no success.  In these scenarios, the recruiter offers the company a window of opportunity—a “court of last resort,” if you will.
3. Those JOs from good client companies who wish to be kept apprised of top-notch talent as those talented people surface, regardless of whether there is an opening.

#4—We are negotiators.

We pre-prep, prep, educate, debrief, act as buffers, and close our deals.

#5—And ultimately, we are GREAT salespeople.

We thrive in a marketplace where our normal Marketing Attempt to Marketing Presentation ratio is somewhere between 10%-25%.  We are successful in that marketplace where we only place with 4% of our client base.  And we deal, on a daily basis, with emotional people on both sides of our transactions (refrigerator salespeople don’t have to worry about their refrigerators changing their minds, getting pregnant, or moving to Topeka!).

And we do all of this via the telephone, which effectively eliminates 3/5ths of our sales tools.  We can only talk and listen.  We can’t reach out and touch, use body language and physical mirroring, or make eye contact.  We have to be exceptional to accomplish all that we accomplish!

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Bob Marshall of TBMG International, founder of The Marshall Plan, has an extensive background in the recruiting industry as a recruiter, manager, vice president, president, consultant, and trainer.  In 2015, Bob is celebrating his 35th year in the recruitment business.  Marshall can be reached at bob@themarshallplan.org or at 770.898.5550.  His website is www.themarshallplan.org.