Reciprocity & Recruitment
Posted by on 6/07/2017
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New to recruitment and struggling to meet the KPI’s set by your Manager around lead generation?
Or, are you an experienced Recruiter who, whilst having been in the game a year or two, hasn’t built the meaningful relationships you were hoping for?
Asking for information from your customers can be a useful, albeit, dangerous activity.
If you’re a regular on LinkedIn, you will have noticed the “I was sitting in a coffee shop, next to a recruiter and he was saying...” or the “A recruiter contacted me yesterday and asked me where I was interviewing, I couldn’t believe it!” posts that get people talking. It’s not the conversations themselves that are getting comments, it’s the fact that there is nothing being given in return. Just an expectation of information that can be monetised.
We are no longer living in a world where you can simply ask people for information and, upon receiving an agitated “p*ss off”, expect to be able to bamboozle candidates with nonsense around a loss of integrity or what their brand might look like to clients who receive their CV from 2 different agencies.
With the introduction of the so called "Millennial mind-set" around entitlement and the general lack of ability to have a real conversation, there is a real loss of finesse when it comes to dealing with customers. Whatever the side of the fence they sit on.
Yes, it might be that you have a conversation with someone and leave without finding out which agencies they are working with, but that’s not the point. The measure of a good conversation is how each party feels at the end of it. Will that individual recommend you to people, answer your call in the future, or brief you on a role when they become a manager?
Reciprocity is the practice of exchanging things with others for mutual benefit. Not solely your benefit. Every exchange that you have with your customers should have a grounding in reciprocity, otherwise you run the risk of alienating people through being too pushy, too salesy, too selfish, too desperate, too transactional.
Never forget, you’re dealing with the most wonderful, changeable, uncontrollable, unpredictable and unique thing in the world when you work in recruitment... people.