4 Classic Mistakes Trainee Recruitment Consultants Must Avoid
Recruitment is one of the most competitive industries, so it is vital that you get off to a flying start to ensure your success. Below we discuss four of the classic mistakes that new consultants make. Avoid these and you’ll be on your way to becoming a big biller.
Avoiding the phone
The most fundamental mistake any trainee recruitment consultant can make. So many trainees come into the industry with a completely false view of what life as a recruitment consultant is, thinking of it as some sort of careers advisor placing people in their dream jobs and getting paid lots of money as a result. The truth is rather different.
Yes you are required to be an expert in recruitment and yes you will be aiming to place fantastic candidates into great employers. But all of this is underpinned by one thing. Sales. If you haven’t got the clients, then you’ve got no business. A large amount of every successful consultant’s day is spent on the telephone doing business development and securing vacancies to work on. There are thousands of other consultants out there doing exactly the same thing so you need to be tough enough to pick up the phone time-after-time and speak to people. If you cannot do that, then recruitment is not for you.
Working the wrong jobs
Some jobs will always be easier to fill than others. Yet despite knowing this, some recruitment consultants will still invest their time and energy working on a vacancy despite it being clear that nothing will ever result from it. That time would have been much better spent developing new business with vacancies that are much more straightforward to fill.
You need to make sure that your vacancies are as qualified as possible. That means they should fulfil all of the following criteria:
– Is there an actual vacancy that has been signed off by the hiring manager? You’ll be surprised how many consultants work on vacancies that when it comes down to it, don’t actually exist.
– Have they agreed your terms and fees? There’s nothing worse than the company pulling out at the last minute because they reject your fees.
– Are their expectations realistic? E.g. are they asking for too much for the salary they are paying? Does that calibre of candidate exist?
– Are they using you exclusively or are they using other agencies as well? If it’s the latter, you’ll probably be best focussing elsewhere.
– Is the company credit worthy? It’s no good doing all the hard work and finding out that the company are poor payers
You may find it scary walking away from a vacancy that doesn’t fulfil all of these criteria. But in the long run, you’ll reap the rewards. You’ll have more time to develop good vacancies for good clients and you’ll find your billings increase too.
Relying too much on the client’s job description
A classic mistake that so many recruiters make; even experienced ones. It’s natural at first to think that as the client knows their business better than you do, then their job spec is bound to be far better than anything you can come up with. Besides, it saves vital time!
What this train of thought misses out is that the client is an expert in their industry, NOT recruitment. That’s your job! So you should be taking the important factors from their job description and rewriting it into a format that will entice the right kind of candidates into applying. It will make your job easier too.
Your job description should be focussed on appealing to the narrow group of people who are suitable for the role and it should not be appealing to just anyone. You don’t want to be inundated with CVs from completely unsuitable candidates.
Taking candidates on face value
As a trainee recruiter, you’ll soon find that taking candidates on face value is a big mistake to make. It’s easy to get drawn in and decide to trust your ‘gut’ instinct but this is something you should never do when placing a candidate. Referencing candidates and doing background checks on social media are crucial.
You’ll find that some of the people you believed 100% live a completely different life to what they told you and their CVs are just fiction. Ask for evidence of EVERYTHING, you owe it to your client as this is what you are being paid to do.
Whether you are a trainee or more experienced recruitment consultant, avoid these four mistakes and you will reap the rewards in terms of billing. What were your biggest mistakes when you first entered recruitment and what advice would you give new entrants to the industry? We’d love to hear your thoughts!
Until next time,
Cheryl