Recruiters always ask me how many jobs
I work on at one time. And they seem surprised when I answer
that I only have the capacity based on my solo-operator
to work on two or three at most.
If I had 15 or 20 recruiters on staff which I did when I managed a
Spherion branch office
it might make sense for me to write
lots of job orders and put them online or into my company's
database.
But I'd try to be careful not to ratchet up my workload
too much. Unless you have the capacity to handle a lot of
orders at a time, over-extending can rob you of the resources
you need to cover the jobs that have the best chance of
getting filled.
It's All About Coverage
Let's suppose that five
people interview for an open position, and one of them happens
to be your candidate. Statistically, you’ve got a 1-to-5
coverage ratio, or a 20 percent chance of filling the job. If
two of the candidates are yours, you have a 40 percent chance,
and so on.
My question is: Why not be the recruiter who refers all the
candidates? That way, you'd have a 100 percent chance of
filling the job.
“But wait!” you say. “I don't need that
kind of coverage. My candidates are superior to those of other
recruiters. They have stronger skills, they're better prepared
to interview, and they’re much more motivated.” Well, that’s
the way I used to think until I got my butt kicked enough
times. Like any other sales endeavor, recruiting is a numbers
game. If the employer has lots of choices, it’s impossible to
predict which candidate will be offered the job. The only
thing you can control is your coverage ratio. And nothing
beats 100 percent.
Victoria’s Secret to
Success
Last year, Victoria Cole of Culver Careers
billed more than $1 million an increase of more than 300
percent from the previous year. How did she do it?
Simple. She applied the fundamental laws of
capacity and coverage. That’s not to take anything away from Victoria,
who’s one of the brightest, most focused recruiters you'll
ever meet. But what elevated Victoria to super-stardom had
more to do with the way she played her cards than with her
talent, intellectual bandwidth or mastery of the mechanics.
Early in her career, Victoria worked extremely
hard to fill esoteric, high-level jobs for technology start-up
companies. But when she took stock of how her resources were
being utilized, she felt like she was killing flies with a
sledgehammer, one by one.
With the full force of a 200-recruiter company
behind her, Victoria reasoned that instead of filling one or
two jobs a month, she could be filling dozens. So she scrapped
her boutique business model and replaced it with one that
focused more on volume. And that’s when the perfect storm
hit.
By
drawing on her company's enormous capacity, Victoria increased
her coverage. And at that point, she realized that she could
also leverage her efforts. By seeking out clients who had
duplicate, like-kind openings, Victoria was able to multiply
her placement activity, without writing more job orders or
working herself to the point of exhaustion.
Not every recruiter has the
resources available to Victoria. But we all have the ability
to work smart, leverage our assets and play to our
strengths.
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