How to Help Yourself By Helping Others Help YOU

In this current environment, making placements is more vital than ever. You want to be the recruiter who stands out from everybody else.

One of the best ways to accomplish this is by leveraging the power of Top Echelon’s recruiting network. (And as luck would have it, you are a member of this network!)

However, there are multiple moving parts involved with this protocol. I’d like to explore them, with an emphasis on doing what is necessary to help your split recruiting partners help YOU to close more deals with your clients.

For the purposes of this blog post, I’ll be focusing on the “importers” in Top Echelon Network, those recruiters who have the job order or search assignment and “import” candidates from their trading partners. Specifically, I will address the data that importers share with exporters, namely the job description and other important information.

This data and information is central to the following three-step process of helping others help YOU make more split placements:

#1—Writing a Good Job Order

Everybody who writes job descriptions probably thinks their write-ups are top notch. So for the sake of posterity, let’s just review the key elements of a well-written job description with the purpose of informing your Top Echelon Network partners about what your client is really seeking in candidates to fill their position.

Position Title: Make sure the title is relevant to the industry and fully written out, avoiding abbreviations.

Job Description: According to respected industry trainer Greg Doersching’s definition of a complete job order, you must accomplish six major objectives. I have listed those objectives below.

1. A complete understanding of what skills and experience the client requires. This goes far beyond a formal job description. You need to find out what the client’s “hot buttons” are. What areas of experience are more important to them than others? This is rarely covered in their formal job description.
2. A picture of how this role fits into the rest of the organization, both from an organizational standpoint, as well as a process standpoint.
3. A complete picture of what it is about this organization that will make a person want to join and stay with this company—the “sizzle.” You must have something that will ATTRACT candidates and the scope of the job responsibilities are not an attractant—what this company offers an employee on a day-to-day quality of life basis is.
4. An idea of where the client would like you (and your trading partners) to search for this candidate—what kind of companies should be targeted.
5. An understanding of whether or not this search assignment is good for your agency. (And by extension, good for your trading partners.)
6. A picture of how this client’s interviewing process will work, including an anticipated timeline.

In short, include every requirement, skill set, list of duties, and details of what the candidate will be doing with who, what, where, why, when, and how. Don’t assume that your trading partners are going to know what your client is looking for, even if it’s a role they have worked a hundred times over. Tell the story in detail!

#2—Including Network Recruiting Instructions

Network Recruiting Instructions are all of the things that you would share with your partner that will make the difference in the types of candidates they send to you—how you like to work, your communication preferences, payment details, and any piece of information that you would share with the partner if they were sitting at the desk next to you.

The Network Recruiting Instructions are designed to help you communicate the intangible items to your partners so they are more effective in their efforts to help you.

#3—Responding to Trading Partners

The final step in all of this is to respond to your partners when they reach out to you. I can not emphasize how critically important this step is. After all, Communication is one of The Four Pillars of Top Echelon Network. This network runs on communication between its members, and this is one area in which you can’t afford to “drop the ball.”

I understand that everybody is busy, and I certainly sympathize with that. However, taking a few minutes of time to respond to a trading partner can make all the difference in the world. (And it can certainly make the difference in terms of whether you make more splits or not.)

And for you exporters in the audience, be sure to read the job details very clearly. Consider this thought before sending a candidate to one of your trading partners for their open position: “If this was my client and my relationship with them was on the line, would I send this candidate?” That is how important this interaction is to your success in the Network.

Remember: ALL Top Echelon Network members should treat one another as they would treat their best client in this business!