Why Recruiters Are Effective At Finding Top Talent

I was invited to contribute to an article on LinkedIn about companies struggling to attract top talent. Everyone gets these invites but they are fun and can be informative. I like to see what people come up with and how LinkedIn structures each article, providing specific sub-topics to contribute your thoughts too. The 6 sections of this article were: Brand Image, Job Listings, Interview Process, Employee Advocacy, Flexibility & Benefits, and Company Culture. I don’t take issue with companies addressing any of these topics, they are all important, but I was surprised to see an article under the category of Recruiting that didn’t focus on Recruiters. I was interested in contributing but I don’t think any of those topics will solve the problem of “struggling to attract top talent.” Now, “top talent” can have many different meanings, but Recruiters are best fit to attract top talent, if they meet certain criteria, because they will go find the top talent. All 6 of those categories can be caught up in the white noise of our busy lives, a great Recruiter cuts through that noise.

Let’s start with why Recruiters and then we’ll look at how Recruiters find top talent. Those who are the top performers in their field are typically spending their time focused on how to be top performers in their field. Once you start to look around, your performance is going to drop off because you’re distracted, your commitment to your current employer is fading, and you’re not growing as a professional. This is why the best stay constantly engaged and focused on what they’re doing: they want to be the best. For the most part, when an employee quits their Hiring Manager tells me that they weren’t that surprised. This is due to a drop in sales or performance, which is natural when looking around. It is very rare that I hear a surprised response from a Hiring Manager or anything close to, “They were doing so well!” It is human nature to pursue activities that we can complete successfully. As we get better and better, we succeed more and more, we become more and more confident, and we pursue said activity further and further. I often track odd statistics and one of them is how many times a candidate tells me, “I wasn’t looking, I don’t really want to leave my company, but you caught my attention.”

This is what a great Recruiter adds to the mix. A company that masters all the topics listed above but doesn’t engage a Recruiter is like an engineer who creates an amazing new product and hopes it sells itself. Recruiters who specialize in an industry and a discipline are going to understand the nuances between different sales positions and companies. Is the role an account manager of Fortune 500 companies or focused on new business development? Is the product flooring and customers include contractors, or furniture and focused on end users? Is it a large corporation with a plethora of internal services, or a small, family-owned business that needs individuals with an entrepreneurial spirit? These are vastly different roles requiring different types of sales professionals to be successful. In addition to providing this knowledge and insight, a great Recruiter will actively engage with the top talent, not wait for them to show up, and probe deeper than what a resume presents to learn about how that individual has been successful rather than just presenting sales numbers. Now, you do have to take the time to understand how your Recruiter engages with talent (I wrote about that here), but that personal engagement is what attracts the top talent.

If you are struggling to attract great candidates, we’re here to help!