Last week I told you about the crazy, and cool, goings on at the Evolve Conference in Czech Republic.

My European trip was primarily for work (no, really, the Rugby World Cup was just a coincidence, seriously…), and I spoke to 750 recruiters in total, in the Czech Republic and also in London and Manchester. Feedback was pretty cool I have to say, so here are a few of the points I made to the recruiters of Europe, although you really had to be there 🙂

There are huge opportunities in Agency recruitment. But not everyone will thrive. There will be some big winners in agency recruitment. And many big losers.

The Recruiters at the London Masterclass show some love!

The rate of change in recruitment means the landscape is littered with ‘yesterday’s heroes’. Is that where you are headed?

Not everyone will rise on the tide. Just relying on a recovery will be your biggest mistake. The benefits will not flow to everyone evenly. We will have to provide something very different to what we provided before.

Past success as a recruiter is no longer a reliable indicator of future success.

Don’t rot in complacency and lethargy. You need to be a recruiter on the front foot. Always be sharpening your edge.

Success in your recruitment career will never be just a matter of qualifications or skills. It will always be a matter of motivation.

Skills shortages are nirvana for us. If we become world champions at finding talent!

Identifying candidates is not the same as recruiting them. It’s the ability to bring talent to the hiring table, and manage the process that clients will pay us for.

In many ways LinkedIn has actually destroyed the efficiency of the recruitment function. It’s actually more difficult to connect with qualified talent because LinkedIn has made data so available the best candidates get swamped, and they get approached in such an un-targeted way.

If you are a recruiter who only has access to candidates your competitors have, and your clients can find, your only weapon is speed or price – and both are a slippery slope to recruiting hell.

The new recruitment metric that matters. Seduction conversion rate. Your hit rate when approaching target candidates.

Most recruiters are still approaching client development 1999 style. Cold calling, spam mailings. Nothing innovative. Recruiters should invest more in marketing, including branding and social, than they should in old school, hard-core sales. It’s a digital world driven by consumer marketing type tactics, and we have to totally reinvent in this area.

You need to attract customers to you through the strength of your brand, which you have invested in via digital, content, and IRL tactics. This is a key new area and you cannot ignore it.

We have to rethink the very way we view our job function. We have to re-assess how we define a “candidate”. We have to adjust our skills and tactics accordingly.

‘Social’ is not a ‘fad’, or a ‘task’, or a ‘project’. You have to embed social in your everyday recruitment activities.

So many recruiters, so many recruitment companies, are busy getting better at things you should not be doing at all!

The battle for quality, unique candidates is starting to resemble a cage fight. 
Why do you treat it as though you are in a pillow fight?

Going on LinkedIn makes you a recruiter in roughly the same way that going into a garage makes you a car.

The simple secret to massive competitive advantage in candidate sourcing – the ability to ‘get’ candidates that others cannot – is phone sourcing!

Great recruiters spend less time trawling the web and more time talking to candidates.

LinkedIn. Less of a sourcing platform. More of a branding platform.

Candidate identification will get easier and easier. Candidate recruiting and hiring will get harder and harder.

Building relationships and managing the process via highly developed skills in the craft of recruitment, becomes the differentiator. That is true of candidates as much as clients

Recruitment is made up of scores of daily human interaction opportunities. ‘Moments of truth!’ Your job is to seek them out and influence the outcome.

Finding someone a job is only half the battle. Getting them to accept it is the other half.

Filling a job does not start with finding good candidates for that order. It starts with taking a well qualified order in the first place.

Your biggest competition is not your ‘competitor’, your clients, technology or anything else. Your competition is you. You have to better than you were yesterday.

The modern recruiter effectively blends best practice use of technology with highly effective human influencing skills.

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Owner Manager Masterclass. ‘Powering Profits in Disrupted times’. With Chris Savage. Six cities, Australia and New Zealand.  Book NOW for Early Bird Discounts.

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