Diversity Recruiter - going Independent

Hello All,

My name is Teisha. I have been a member of this group for about a year I believe and I have watched and read the email convos that come through and while some are quite entertaining others are very informative. It appears as though there quite a few, highly knowledgeable people in this group and I would like their advice.

I have been recruiting for about 11 1/2 years and am ready to venture out on my own with a focus in Diversity recruiting. I have worked for large corps a few outsourcing companies and for the past 4 years, I have been contract recruiting/sourcing for various firms, working from my home office.

As for going at it on my own - I have no idea of where to start! I am looking at some of these outsourcing companies that are quite small, however are gaining these accounts and making promises that some of them can not keep and I figured.. I can do that, possibly better!

I am pretty much straight forward with my delivery and not very good at getting attention unless I am face to face with someone. I want to know things like, how do I approach potential clients.. (email campaign, mass mailings, cold calling..etc) .. what is some good verbiage to use to get attention, what should I have in place before reaching out to potential clients..... can't think of anything else, I am sure there is something I am missing, so I would like any and all advise I can get.

Thanks for your help.
Teisha

Comment by Karen Swim on May 21, 2008 at 8:18am: Hi Teisha! Congratulations on seizing your opportunity. While I am not a recruiter I do know sales, marketing and business start up. I would be happy to share tips, resources and information. Before you decide on how you will market, it helps to identify your ideal client. Who are they? Where are they when they make the decision to buy? What steps do they take to make that decision? How often will they buy? What problems are they trying to solve? What information do they need? When you have flushed out a complete profile then you can choose the marketing method that will be most effective in reaching them. The biggest mistake you can make is trying to do everything at once and focusing on too broad of an audience. I know that there are many other successful recruiters here who can also offer specific action steps.

I wish you the best, and if you need help, please ask. ;)

Karen
linkedin.com/in/karenswim
twitter.com/karenswim

Comment by Kim Green on May 26, 2008 at 10:00pm: Hi Teisha,

My name is Kim Green, IT Recruiter in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have 13+ years experience and for the last eight years I have been an Independent IT Recruiter and I enjoy it .... I love the freedom. To find clients, networking is always good. You can always get this information from the (AIRS) newsletter, they're good at providing you with who's hiring and laying off. A few other good places are company websites, LinkedIn, User's Groups (.Net/Java), Job Boards, candidates and of course various other Recruiting Networks just to name a few. I would approach new clients by contacting the VP of that division as well as working with Human Resources, a lot of times we need them to obtain more business in their company. If you go to user networking meetings, you can get business cards from people there that may have openings.

Let's keep in touch!

Please join me on LinkedIn: kimgreentcp@earthlink.net

Best of luck to you!

Kim