Recruiting Passive
Candidates - Networking with LinkedIn for Great Referrals
by Lou Adler
I’ve just written a recent
companion piece on ERE on my top ten favorite networking techniques for
recruiting passive candidates. There were actually more than 20, but here are
the next five. Caution: there are two prerequisites when using any of these
techniques. First, you must get the candidate to agree to enter into an
exploratory career discussion as a condition for beginning the conversation.
Second, with this permission granted, give no more than a 20-second overview of
the position, and then immediately ask the prospect to provide some preliminary
background information.
These two steps are both
essential. They establish the recruiter as the buyer, giving you the option to
determine if you’re interested in pursuing the candidate. If you’re the seller,
the candidate makes this call, preventing you from getting referrals. With this
opening requirement in mind, here are some referral generating techniques you
can use the next time you’re on the phone with a top passive prospect.
Lou Adler’s Favorite Passive
Candidate Recruiting Techniques – Numbers 10-15
- The Cherry Picker. Once you determine the candidate is not
suitable for your opening, it’s time to shift the conversation towards
getting referrals. One way to get referrals is to just look at the
person’s LinkedIn connections and ask the person who’s the best on the
list. Cherry-pick a few of them based on title and company and ask the
person to rank the person performance-wise. This is a great way to get a
list of highly qualified referrals. Even if people are willing to provide
referrals, most of them can’t think of anyone unless you remind them by
mentioning specific names.
- Network with Networkers. I like to talk to sales
and business development people who might have sold products or services
to potential candidates. These people are very willing to provide names
since they might get new customers. For example, I’ve called software
sales reps to find senior level IT people who had buying authority. This
same technique can be used by contacting the target candidate’s likely
customers, consultants, or those who provide professional services (e.g.,
lawyers, CPAs).
- The Backdoor Approach. This technique involves
finding people from other departments who would typically have worked with
the target candidate. For example, people in sales and marketing always
work with those in product development and finance/accounting. Calling
these people and asking for the names of the best people they worked with
at prior companies is an easy way to get some great referrals. You can
combine this with the LinkedIn Cherry Picker technique to leverage these
efforts.
- The Slowdown. You don’t need to get referrals on the first
call. If you’ve conducted a short evaluation of the prospect and have
developed some reasonable rapport, you can call back sometime later to get
referrals. One way to do this is to tell the candidate you’re a little
concerned the person is too light (or too heavy), but want to review the
person’s background with the hiring manager. When you call back, offer a
nice pat on the back, with a solid reason why you can’t move forward at
this time. Then immediately switch the conversation towards getting
referrals. You can also combine the Slowdown with the Backdoor Approach to
get referrals of people your prospect has worked with in other
departments.
- Pay It Forward. You need to nurture your network to keep it
warm. One way to do this is to send a link to some professional article,
offer interviewing or career advice even if you’re not working closely
with the person, or offer to call the person if you hear about a job the
person should check out, even if it’s not yours. If you keep this up,
people in your network will soon go out of their way to provide you with
some great referrals.
Getting high-quality referrals is
the key to finding and placing top performers. LinkedIn and its corporate
Recruiter version provide access to millions of names. To some degree this
gives an advantage to those with access to the most of them. However, this
advantage is short lived if you don’t make a point of expanding this network by
getting more top referrals on every call. Calling a pre-qualified top person
who will call you back is the real secret to recruiting passive candidates. My
suggestion is to get 2-3 top quality referrals from every person who isn’t a
serious candidate for the current search. Then spend most of your time calling
these referrals, rather than calling people cold. This idea, in combination
with the techniques presented here, will keep you at the top of any recruiting
leaderboard.
Re-posted with written permission from
the Author Lou Adler
Precision
Recruiting
Web: www.PrecisionRecruiting.ca
