Do Recruiters Visit New Clients Before a Search?

At Top Echelon, we encourage Network recruiters to send possible questions for our weekly Members’ Area poll . . . and we have just such a question this week in The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog!

Since Industry & Manufacturing has been the number-one niche in Top Echelon Network pretty much since its inception, this question is especially pertinent.

The question, which we recently posted in the Members’ Area, is as follows:

Do you visit the facility of a new client before starting a search for them?

Results:

The choice of answers that we provided is listed below, along with the percentage of recruiters that selected each one:

• Yes, every time — 3.8%
• Yes, most of the time — 13.1%
• Yes, every once in a while — 26.9%
• No, I’d rather get started on the search. — 15.0%
• No, it’s not practical for my niche. — 30.0%
• No, for some other reason. — 11.2%

Analysis:

It’s not surprising that a small percentage of poll participants (3.8%) visit the facility of a new client every time before starting a search for that client. After all, client visits are time-consuming—and by extension, costly.

However, 26.9% of recruiters indicated that they visit the facility of a new client “every once in a while” before starting a search, and 13.1% chose “Yes, most of the time” as their answer. As to be expected, nearly a third of respondents claimed that visiting the facility of a new client was not practical for their niche.

Another 11.2% stated that they don’t visit the facility of a new client “for some other reason.”

Conclusion:

“Do recruiters visit the facility of a new client before starting a search for them?” is NOT an easy question to answer. That’s because the answer is “Sometimes . . . depending on certain things . . . and according to their preferences.”

Here are the conclusions that we can draw from the results of this poll:

• Recruiters attach a certain degree of importance to visiting the facilities of their new clients, as evidenced by the percentage of them that do visit.
• The frequency with which they visit new clients varies, indicating that the importance level varies from recruiter to recruiter.
• Some recruiters either attach no importance to client visits, or even if they do, they don’t conduct them for other reasons, which may or may not have something to do with their chosen niche.

Some of the “rules” for the recruiting profession are not hard and fast. What works for one firm does not necessarily work for another, and client visits certainly fall into that category.

How about YOU? Do you visit the facility of a new client before starting a search?