Good morning, Fellow Recruiters - as of late, I've seen more and more 3rd-Party Recruiters (and Contract, as well as Internal Recruiters as well) really trying to up their game with the usage of the Social Web and quicker, more effective, more efficient conversation, etc. These are all great things and the needle is definitely moving forward.

At the same time, however, I worry that the majority of us are focusing more and more and more on Candidate Identification and Attraction that we've forgotten about the very basic importance of Candidate Presentation to our Clients. It's as if the more technology blossoms, the farther we can get away from the fundamentals in this line of work. I've only been Recruiting 6 years, but I can honestly say that my billings went up tremendously when I realized 2 things:

1. A Great Recruiter Asks Great Questions (both of their Clients and Candidates). There are tons of Trainers out there that can help with this (Danny Cahill, Peter Lefkowitz, Doug Beabout, Scott Love, etc.) I probably spend at least $1k a year taking advantage of their training so I can stay sharp.

2. A Great Recruiter Creates Knock-out Candidate Presentations. Seriously, this is the one area that I don't see Recruiters really doing a super job. It's like we kill ourselves to find and recruit top-tier Candidates, and we're so excited to submit them that when we do, it's a resume and a short, hard-hitting paragraph explaining why they're a solution and a fit.

The result is much of the same - it's a gamble. Put it like this: I can take 100 Recruiters and give them all the very same Candidate. I'd estimate 5 of the 100 Recruiters will move the Candidate forward, despite the fact that they all have the same Candidate. Why is that? Because it all comes down to how we present our Candidates as a solution and a fit.

Here's where I'm going with this -- starting late last year, I started using an integrated marketing platform that allows for me to create video presentations of my Candidates to Clients. No, it's not an ATS - the market already has enough of those. So what's happened here is that I've moved beyond paper . . . and my submission-to-sendout ratio has nearly doubled in effectiveness. I'm impressed by this because most Recruiters I know are seeing the opposite happen (i.e. more submissions, less sendouts). Further, I've promoted to the Candidate market that they understand how important it is to find a Recruiter that can present them powerfully. As a result, I have more Candidates seeking me out (once I show them that their presentation is password protected, they're game).

The ComF5 platform is only $40/mth and includes live broadcasting (and archived presentations that can be viewed on-demand, like a Candidate presentation), landing pages and forms for marketing and info capture, autoresponders for new Client prospecting (and industry-related newsletters for Candidate attraction), email campaigns that incorporate video if you want, video email (or audio email), etc. If you haven't seen how cool a video email is, drop me a note with your email address and I'll shoot you one off in seconds (using my webcam). When a Client asks why you charge 25% instead of the standard 20%, show them how you use this platform - when I started doing this, resistance was way easier to overcome increased fees.

If you'd like a quick overview of what I'm talking about (along with a hypothetical candidate presentation), you can find it here.

For a more generic overview of everything the platform can do, hope on over to ComF5's home site. I'm working on some Recruiter-specific presentations, but this might wet your palette as to what is possible with the platform.

P.S. As for pricing, it's $40/mth and allows for 5k contacts to be imported. If you'd like to recommend it to other Recruiters or Small Biz Owners, it's $100/mth, but includes a residual cashflow component (i.e. monthly commissions).

I'd love to connect with you about it. Feel free to give me a ring or drop me a line here on RBC:

Josh (404-542-5827 cell)