How to Source Candidates in  Building Materials

Whether you need a salesperson (or any person) now, or if you need them in three months, six months, or you might hire one again, naturally you have got to be adept at sourcing.

Whether it’s a plant manager or an operations manager, an engineer, it doesn’t matter the role. It really applies to any kind of talent that you’re consistently bringing into your company.

Your Candidates Aren’t MIA!

Just know that they are out there, your talent is out there. They’re not always on the job boards, though. So it really becomes a struggle for a lot of companies when their only method of getting out into the market is to use job boards, job postings, and, and advertising. It doesn’t always work because candidates aren’t always applying for jobs.

In fact, WorkItDaily writes, “Job boards have a 2-4% effectiveness rate, whereas networking has over a 50% effectiveness rate.”

Traditional Sourcing Methods

In the traditional methods, you have the job boards or where you were basically just putting up an ad at indeed on ZipRecruiter, on LinkedIn and, and hoping that the right person applies. And it does work a lot of the time.

If you really want to make a informed decision, if you want to take a lot of risk out of the process, if you want to have multiple options on the table, you need to make sure that you’re seeing as much of the market as possible, so you have as many opportunities as possible.

Not everybody’s applying on job boards. The same goes for the resume databases that are under the exact same science. Not everybody is putting their resume on LinkedIn or Indeed or ZipRecruiter.

Other traditional methods are the corporate postings. you put them on your corporate website. You could ask for referrals from your employees. Some companies work with the chamber of commerce or local newspapers and magazines to advertise their position.

Modern Sourcing Methods

More modern methods are going to be focused around effectively marketing. We want to not only use lead databases to create directories for the employees that you’re recruiting. You want to make sure that you know who all is in that local market. You want to get their email and contact information.

You also want to consider setting up what is considered an omnipresent digital marketing strategy where not only are you continually staying in front of the candidate list you do have, but also getting in front of prospective candidates or people that have not yet displayed an interest. You need to make sure that you’re giving them an opportunity to learn more about your company and what the benefits of joining it would be for their career.

Tracking Info is Key

Naturally, you’re going to want to track everything. So if you don’t have an applicant tracking system, the easiest way to do this is just an Excel workbook. Set up a different sheet for each role, each location, and build that out over time. You want to make sure that you’re keeping accurate information in there, not only the contact information, the, where they are, what their title is, but also notes from each conversation.

If you’ve had full on screens, you want to include a lot of critical information for that candidate to make sure that you take it away later on you should consistently be expanding the list.

Learn About the Market

You want to know if company A has five salespeople that are working over there that are selling to your exact customers. You want to know all five of those people. You don’t want to just give up after meeting one or two. There’s no reason that you shouldn’t meet the other people, they’re there. They’re interacting with your customers. They’re using your products. You want to make sure that you hit least have some type of communication lane with this.

When you’re ready to contact your key associates directly, check out our article on Managing Initial Communication

So that’s a standard sourcing strategy for you. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at james@legacysearch.net. I look forward to getting introduced.

How to Navigate the Counter-Offer as a Hiring Manager

The Candidates Employer’s Retaliation: The Counteroffer

You’ve got a candidate all the way through the process. You’ve gone through all the hoops and hurdles and done all the interviews . All the stakeholders have signed off and you finally get to the point where you make that offer. . . Don’t be so fast to pat yourself on the back.

Don’t set off the the balloons and the streamers in the headquarters quite yet, because there’s always what hiring companies hate and they dread; the counter offer.

The age old wisdom is that no candidates should accept a counteroffer, but that trend might be changing as shown in this article from HBR, “Consider Your Counteroffer.”  So here’s exactly how you prep the candidate for that situation.

How Will the Candidate Manage Their Resignation?

Whenever you make an offer and they accept. You want to know what is the candidate strategy for resigning and making that transition? Are they, are they doing a one week, a two week? Is it a situation where often when someone quits they’ll give them two days to pack their stuff and get out? Are there special projects that they’re working on? Maybe it’s a month notice – you just need to know their timeline.

Provide Support and Direction for the Candidate

So you understand the transitional period there. You can always give them a template, a resignation letter that sometimes helps folks whenever they go to resign. If they’ve never done it before, or they’re a little nervous, give them something to work with so they can go in, have the meeting, leave the letter and everything is pretty much well understood.

Consult the Candidate to Understand Their Mindset

Talk with them about the possibility of the counteroffer directly. Do you think your employer is going to counter? If they counter, are they going to offer you 50% more than we offered you? Where are they going to come in at? Would you stay if they offered you 50% more than we’re offering? If they offered 25%, more, 10% more? If they matched, would you stay?

Aside from money, you need to focus on the value that you bring. That’s why you talked with them earlier about their career aspirations and you talk with them about the gripes they have with their current company.

You have to learn that in order to make up for a gap that might show up. People are money interested, but it’s not always all about the money. If you’re helping their work life balance, if you’re helping them accelerate their career, if you’re getting them in a better environment, you need to make sure that they’re aware of that during the process.

Make Sure You Have a Seat at the Negotiation Table

If the only person that is fighting for them at that point is their current employer and they’re throwing that money in their face and you don’t even get an argument – it’s not a good spot to be in. You want to be able to be a part of that negotiation as well. If that happens.

Remember to use the tactics cited in “How to Manage a First Interview” in order to have all of the necessary information BEFORE the counteroffer is a possibility…

So that’s what you should do whenever you make an offer and they’ve got to resign. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email at james@legacysearch.net. I look forward to getting introduced.

The Secret Recruiters Don’t Want You To Know

Dramatically Increase Your Recruiting Results

I wanted to give you a secret, I want to show you exactly how to dramatically increase your results from recruiting with one little trick.

The trick is. . . talk to more qualified candidates.

Make More Freakin’ Phone Calls!

As one of the greats in the recruiting agency world, Jordan Rayboy said, [if you want to be successful] “Make more freakin phone calls!”

Easier said than done though. Right?

If you talk to more candidates, you’re going to be able to get more leads.

The more talent leads, the more access to the network that’s important to you.

Most importantly, they’re going to be able to take a lot of risk out of the hiring process.

You’ll have a great understanding of what the market as a whole looks like.

Not to mention you’ll have multiple options on the table in case a surprise shows up late in the interview process.

The whole process really puts you in the most ideal position to effectively grow your team and firm altogether.

“But How Do I Make More Freakin’ Phone Calls?”

So you can do this one or two ways…

#1. You can do it yourself

#2. Get someone else to do it

If you want us to be that special someone – check out our Black Book concept here – blackbook.legacysearch.net