Over the past three weeks, I have heard dozens of recruitment agency MD's say that their biggest challenge is hiring quality recruiters. Hiring high quality recruiters often solves the problem of getting quality candidates and clients. In this post I am going to give some thoughts on how companies could source better candidates.

I met with an exciting new search to search company this week called NU Talent. They place recruiters in executive search and recruitment companies.

For them, clients are easy to come by, as almost every recruitment company in London is looking for top recruitment talent. It's the candidates that are difficult to find. Luckily for them, they have a good stable of top recruiters and they know what packages will entice them to move. But in order to scale their business, sourcing top performing recruitment candidates is going to be critical so we discussed candidates, what makes them tick and what makes them move jobs.

According to NU Talent, salary, compensation and earning potential were top considerations for high performing senior recruitment consultants. Followed by how successful the offering company had been to date. Candidates also wanted to understand growth potential for the offering company. Candidates also asked about the culture of the business and what the team around them would be like. Would they be in a professional and challenging environment? Would they get the opportunity to learn from others and receive professional development?

No surprises for any of us there and it all sounds fairly straight forward right?

So if these are the questions that top performing canddiates ask then question that I have is: Where on recruitment companies websites is the quality content about:

•  Salary and Earning Potential

•  Company and Individuals' Success and Clients

•  Culture and Team

Where on most companies websites do they have rich content describing these three criteria in relation to their company? The answer is that most companies don't have content on their site relating to salary and don't discuss earning potential even represented in percentages versus industry benchmarks. They don't have videos of staff who have been successful or been promoted nor do they have video testimonials of clients that would convince a recruiter to come and work there.

Content and conversation is what convinces talent. The NU Talent founders identified that point some time back and are currently planning and creating their content and are planning the launch of their blog and social content soon. This is where most established companies should be today already.

How much revenue does an average recruiter generate per annum in London for the business – £250k? The cost of hiring them is probably £80k to £90k and so the margin for a recruiter is £160k per year. Of course better recruiters can generate £500k up to £1.5m depending on their level of capability.

If I told you that I would give you at least £160k for filming you, your staff and clients discussing topics such as your compensation, culture, growth, professional development and quality of service, you would probably bite my hand off and say 'yes please'. So why don't recruitment companies in London create relevant content to convince their audience of recruiters better?

I would say that it is because they are so busy with the day to day tasks of running the company that they haven't realised that hiring better recruiters will also help them source better clients and candidates. Often they haven't thought to look at their business through the eyes of their target talent or thought about what is important to top performing recruiters in their sector.

What to do:

1.    Identify how many recruiters you need to hire to hit target and meet your growth plans.

2.    Understand how much revenue a top performing recruiter means to your business versus an underperforming or average one.

3.    Take ownership of the project to engage target talent recruiters online.

4.    Identify how much staff time and money it is worth investing in social content to hire top performers.

5.    Identify your audience by job title and company type.

6.    Listen to them online and offline and understand what is most important to them in a job and understand what would convince top performers to move.

7.    Create content that convinces them that your company meets their criteria for moving (only if it is true)

8.    Share the content online with your target talent in the online spaces they frequent and give them the opportunity to give you their details and online collect the bare minimum data and information that allows you to contact them and that also qualifies them as a top performer like 'What percentage of your target are you at?' or 'What revenue range  are you in?'

9.    Once you have gathered relevant details commit your staff's time to engage them in online conversations supported by relevant online content and data and subsequently telephone conversations that will lead to face ti face interviews.

10.    Build these interactions and online activities into the KPI's of your existing staff and measure the activities and reward them.

If you would like help training your staff to use social media to hire top performing recruiters feel free to get in touch with us @eSocialMediauk or check out our website