Recruiters, Here’s What You Need To Do To Draw In Talent
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Because this other game plan isn’t working at all.
For the past eight years I have grown a thriving consulting business in which I develop and support high school students and young adults in their pursuit of college, graduate school, employment, and living the lives they actually want to live as the people they actually are or are becoming. I’m at turns a nurturing counselor, motivational creative writing teacher, intense grammarian, wise sarcastic aunt, and goofball comic relief.
Alongside providing great service I have built my business towards the management and ethical framework that I wish all companies followed. If I am not a great boss, why even work for myself?
Being an entrepreneur has plenty of challenges but far more upsides than returning to an office where someone else arbitrarily assigns me busywork I am not allowed to refuse or asks me for far more emotional labor than I can handle.
Which is why whenever a recruiter reaches out to me — almost always on LinkedIn, and very, very frequently — I am astonished at the absolute lack of awareness that every single such person seems to have about either what I have made or what they would need to offer to lure me away from my own enterprise.
Here are the elements that I believe any recruiter who wants to get results needs to include in their pitch to nab a quality hire.
Demonstrate that you understand who you’re talking to.
I get it, I get it — you run your internet search, dig up piles of prospects, and don’t have time to message me with a novel thoughtfully quilted together using obscure references from deep cuts on my website, lead magnet, or Instagram.
But if you write a successful solopreneur intoning that she’s offering services “in her free time” as if she’s waiting for the day that Prince LinkedIn Recruiter Charming shows up on his white horse to give her a giant pay cut to work for an international corporation, why wouldn’t you expect to miss me entirely?
