First contact: Phone or Digital?

Leading up to 2000 the best recruiters were connecting with passive candidates through in person networking, cold calls and probably still getting faxed resumes at times! Networking in person still adds the most value in my opinion, especially if you speak "technical". The phone is without a doubt still necessary and still the most efficient way to maintain an existing relationship. With the introduction and current influence of job boards, forums, social media, groups and the like has the game really changed? What I am getting is when you are recruiting "techies" are you more likely to get a response using the typical phone call and voice mails or are you better served to use a digital channel as your introduction.

This is a constant debate in my circles as the management of course wants to "hear the hum" of phone calls during our predetermined "blitz" times and feels that if your are not on the phone all day you are not working. There is of course truth to the logic behind this line of thinking and as most of them have not really recruited for over 5-10 years I understand why they feel this way. That said when I look at the most successful people around me....Derek Kinzel.... they are not necessarily the recruiters with the highest call volume, they are the most creative, who can connect with the cream of the crop and have the highest call quality. The calls they make are "warm" based on an intro that typically happens through a digital channel.

I regularly have individuals who saw me somewhere out there in the digital universe reach out to me through a more traditional channel (phone) or tell me about seeing me out there once we actually meet in person. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Craigslist, Meetup, About.me...and hundreds more of online properties offer recruiters the opportunity to not only reach out but the opportunity to figure out what people are passionate about which I believe is the key to connecting with the top technical resources in the country.

For technical professionals, specifically the creative types, software engineers, web developers, open source developers, designers and the like, are we as recruiters making more headway by making a 100 calls or finding a creative way to digitally reach out to 10 people?

Hire Learning - Under Construction

Comment by Jerry Albright on March 25, 2011 at 9:28am: Frankly I find it hard to make the number of calls I did in the 80s and 90s. There just aren't as many numbers to dial as there once was.

As I think about this (great topic by the way!) I would guess most of my phone calls begin with connecting by email to start. Once a connection has been made I get to the phone as quickly as I can though. It's hard to really learn about someone if we try to just keep the email or text string going. Need to take that offline and into a real back and forth discussion as soon as you can.

It would be very hard to keep up an 80 or 100 call pace in today's world. Most calls just go to VM straight away. 20 years ago people answered the phones. It's just different now.....

Comment by C. B. Stalling!! on March 25, 2011 at 12:14pm: The phone is my most important tool. Then email - then the internet.

Comment by Sandra McCartt on March 25, 2011 at 4:54pm: Probably 90% of my contacts start with email,a tweet or a digital touch somehow. Even from clients listing a job. We may have two or three email exchanges prior to talking about the nuances of the job. I have an efax but discourage anyone from faxing at this point. Two reasons. If they don't know how to email a resume it worries me if they are placeable. Second faxed documents sometimes distort.

The number of complaints i am hearing from everyone about being "cold called" deters me from making cold calls. I make 99% warm calls (the person i am calling knows at least my name and what i do)

If a candidate calls me before emailing a resume it's a short conversation. I ask for a resume to be emailed then call them back.

Comment by Sandra McCartt on March 25, 2011 at 5:01pm: What i am hearing from internals that i work with and hiring managers is that they are sick to death of recruiters calling them day after day. One told me yesterday that she would never use Robert Half if they had the last accountant on the planet because they are calling her and leaving voice mails as many as 10 times a day. She will not take their calls and knows one thing for sure. She will never use them.

Comment by Al Merrill on March 25, 2011 at 5:10pm: Today, I find a text message to their mobile phone asking for a callback gets their attention the quickest, especially as most candidates are working and will at least peek at their mobile phone even if they don't immediately respond. I know I don't make near the same calls for just the reasons Jerry mentioned.

Comment by Chris Short on March 25, 2011 at 5:29pm: Al, my colleague and I call texting "switching to guns". When we really need a quick response we use this method. Great technique! With the emergence of twitter and other micro blogging sites people are more comfortable with short to the point messages like texts.

Comment by Al Merrill on March 25, 2011 at 5:38pm: I just get the BlackBerry SMS humming! Works for me! It is really hard to believe how far we've come reaching out to people, and the milestone changes some of us have seen.

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