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The Real Reason Behind Candidate Drop-outs

I am in no way a recruiter, but i briefly wore the hat of one when I placed 2 perm developers in 1 week without even trying, while I saw other recruiters hustle and struggle to make this number over the span of months in particular tech markets. Over the past 5 years working in the IT industry and walking in the shoes of a candidate, i’ve had the pleasure to work with some of the good recruiters out there and a lot of the not so up to par ones as well, and over this time i’ve had many observations about tech recruitment especially recently when I embarked on a thorough research asking questions and trying to find answers.

In the past few months since the end of 2017, I’ve been talking to many recruiters and reading a lot on this craft, and it appeared to me one of the biggest problems tech recruiters face in high demand technology markets is candidates dropping off mid engagement, which is understanbly frustrating especially working with limited candidate pools, and it leaves one confused and unsure what to do in order to avoid this happening again. Your candidate not even picking up your calls or responding to your emails and not sharing any feedback that you could start with, leaves you pondering in your own head as to what has been the reason for them to just cut you off like that.

Coming back to me and from my experience on the candidate side there are a few things I could say about this. I can think of two main reasons why a candidate would cut off their recruiter and never get back to them:

  1. They just found another opportunity or accepted an offer (This you don’t have control over and it’s too late down the hiring process to rectify this)
  2. They didn’t take you seriously and don’t have any confidence in you or your ability to find them the right role (Now this you have control over and i’ll tell you why)

If a candidate finds another job there’s little you can do to keep them interested in what you have to offer, therefore the best you can do here is accept the nature of the job market and move on, because really when companies or recruiters fill a role they have they don’t get back to each candidate and tell them they weren’t successful (only a few do this). The only control you have over this outcome is to focus on the input which came way earlier in the engagement process before reaching this stage and this gets me to the second point.

If your candidates aren’t taking you seriously chances are it’s because you’ve given them a good reason not to. The first impression you build with your candidate is very very important because that will set the tone and premise on which you will continue your hiring engagement. In that first conversation you must be able to show them you know what you’re talking about, you’re confident about your knowledge of the role (the tech involved and the responsibilities), you’re confident in your knowledge of the client’s work environment and requirements.

Once you exhibit the fact that you’re well informed, this leaves your candidate no choice but to take you seriously and listen to what you’ve got to offer, and this has given you edge of 90% of any other recruiter who might approach your candidate with another opportunity and it drops the chances of your candidate cutting you off by 80% as well, because once you’ve built a relationship with them based on confidence and competence, the least they owe you is an explanation as to why they’re not interested in the role you have anymore, and this right here has flipped your failed attempt to fill the role into an opportunity to learn from feedback.

In a nutshell the best way for you to reduce candidate drop offs and improve your ability to close a perfect candidate for your role is to become a better recruiter. Is it really that simple? how do you do that? you might ask. Try to educate yourself better on the tech involved in your roles, do the homework when it comes to your client, their working environment and requirements, and finally give yourself more time to do these tasks by focussing a little more on one area of the market than others and not just be jack of all trades.

If you would like to find out more on how you can achieve this faster and hassle free, check out my website and book a FREE consultation with me today: cruits.uk

Two Things You Can Do Right Now to Improve Your Tech Recruitment Skills

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90 percent of recruiters I spoke to seem to think their biggest problem is being able to find candidates or getting through to them. They’re wrong, here’s why.

Everyone has access to Job boards, CV DBs, LinkedIn and most importantly to English language skills which allow them to connect and socialize with potential candidates, but everyone’s acting as if there’s still this hive of candidates hidden somewhere which no one has gotten to yet and the only way to get to it is by using some fancy AI invention or some sort of “The Matrix” inspired automation tool. I know this because just the other day someone actually tried to sell me on hiring them as recruiters because they have access to this “really good new software that can provide high calibre candidates really really quickly”. But let me break it to you. There isn’t such candidate hive.

Nowadays we’re closer tan ever to full penetration of the markets and candidate pools, with all the tools previously mentioned and the different social media channels, 90% of recruiters stand to get access to 90% percent of all potential candidates at any given time. So what is the problem then?

We need to take step back and see what’s happening after we engage these candidates, If I’m a recruiter and I’m able to send 500 outreach attempts (emails or calls) to candidates about a certain role this week, and only 20 of those response and convert into interviews and then 15 of those 20 drop out after arranging interviews, then my problem is certainly not FINDING the candidates, I probably should look at the way i’m approaching this candidate hunt or in fact the whole acquisition process.

Most likely what I’m experiencing right now is the result of something I and many other recruiters have been doing for years. Just grab that role or “urgent requirement” from the client and broadcast it through my CV DB or to any of my LinkedIn connections who match a single keyword from the brief and see what comes out the other end.. This very behaviour and mechanism in sourcing/activating candidates for roles has driven most candidate pools away from wanting to work with recruiters.

There’s also an element of quality vs quantity here, rather than making 200 meaningless outreach messages about the role, maybe I can spend 30 more minutes to identify a few candidates who might actually be a genuine match to the spec. You see right now with this massive shift in the market place, where job markets are becoming more job rich and candidate short, it takes a little more than just broadcasting a JD to a host of emails for recruiters to make a placement, it’s not a numbers game anymore.

This leaves us then with one other option to create a better chance for ourselves as recruiters in being able to fill these roles. To focus more on the quality of our engagements. How do we do that?

  1. Be more tech relevant. Don’t send a PHP role to a Java developer or a Java role to a C# developer who’s done some Java project 10 years ago in uni (obvious single keyword match here)
  2. Be more position relevant. Don’t send an architect role to a mid level developer who has a brilliant potential in being a technical lead but he just needs this next less pressuring role and a bit more experience to fill that position

And how do we achieve being relevant? being informed. Educate yourself, spend time to learn about your markets, your candidates. Completely changing your approach for sourcing a candidate for your next role, it surely sounds like a lot to do and a bit scary to some. But it’s worth trying because doing what you’ve always done will get you more of what you’re getting: More frustration trying to get through to candidates, and more candidates dropping out when you actually do get through to them, and last and not least your hiring managers taking the piss and treating you just like another CV crawling bot.

Powering yourself with all these DB’s, bulk outreach, AI or automation tools and going in for the candidate hunt without the necessary skills is like a deer hunter having the best shotgun of all but zero ability in targeting and the noisiest way of moving about. It doesn’t work.

The best way to get ahead then is to gain this edge over your competition by getting access to knowledge which is the insider insight into the candidates world, what client requirements look like from on the battlefield, and the specifics of building teams and delivering projects in particular tech markets. The best way to get this knowledge is from the very mouth of the beast itself, the mind of a technical candidate who’s there to help.

I’ve put together a free training for recruiters on how they can improve their ability to source, screen, and place candidates in technology jobs in addition to other topics. If you or anyone you know is interested checkout my website and book a free Consultation today: cruit.uk

How to Attract Candidates Without Even Trying

It is true there has been quite a lot of efforts in the recruitment industry around candidate attraction in tech markets. I see podcasts and video conference channels solely dedicated for this topic and people daily dissecting different methods and techniques on how to attract talent. From marketing automation to methods of copywriting and promoting job adverts. I wouldn’t want to make assumptions on how the results have been, but from my experience as a candidate and from the research I have done speaking to fellow developers in various disciplines, I could say a few things.

Historically, or maybe just recently it seems to me the craft of recruitment has been closely aligned with sales, it’s looked at as a numbers game where a “consultant” is a glorified sales rep who’s target is to dial as many numbers on their phone and send as many retargeting emails as they could to be able to reach as many candidates as humanly possible telling them about this “urgent role” their client has got, and the rationale is, “If i send 500 emails, and make 20 calls every day this week, I should surely be able to harvest about 10 good CVs (or at least ones I think are good) and send out 5 of those to my client which will eventually get 2 or 3 people into interviews”. This is more or less the strategy which 80% of recruitment businesses follow and I don’t mean to bash or insult anyone, Only highlighting the impact of the rising demand on particular skills which has pushed recruiters to frantically hop on any new or niche tech market they come across, or any requirements that come in from their clients and try to cast their net as wide as they can thinking that’s the way for them to be most profitable in a time where demand on skilled talent is as high as it gets.

But there’s a small problem with this strategy, It doesn’t work anymore. No one has ever stopped to think, why is this high demand on talent though, it is clear it’s because of shortage of skills, and what does that mean? limited number of candidates and what does a small number of candidates mean? it’s not a numbers game anymore. Because when you rotate once and twice and trice on the same candidate pool with your seemingly attractive sales pitch for the role, chances are you’ve pretty much put yourself in front of the whole candidate pool in the window of days. And what happens if your way of presenting this role is poor because you have minimal knowledge of the client or tech? you’ve pretty much ruined the whole candidate pool for yourself (and your colleagues too!). You might be asking how.

I’ve actually seen this happen first hand being part of a very niche technology market with quite a small candidate pool, where the developers in this technology pretty much have a dedicated Slack channel to call out recruiters on how bad they’re approach is to selling these candidates certain roles, and what do you think will happen when some 3000 developers all see your name and laugh at how bad you are at selling this role? You’ve lost yourself the chance to make any placements in this small yet very profitable niche tech market.

Now that we’ve established it’s not a numbers game anymore (limited quantity) let’s try and focus on the quality. When working with such small candidate pools you are expected to be up to the standard in terms of your knowledge of your client requirements, the market, and have a minimal understanding of the technology involved. No one ever stopped to think to ask candidates what they care about, or what they aspire to, or at least what draws their attention. Most recruiters are out there brainstorming theories and making plans and starting full blown startups which are all based on their personal experience in recruitment and minimal research on the market or candidates side which is the side they claim they are the advocate of in their so called innovative endeavor.

So enough foreplay, tell me why i’m reading this, tell me WHAT DO CANDIDATES WANT?

It’s simple, but not really, let me explain. the recruitment industry has gotten so distorted that candidates in small pools and niche technologies dispise recruiters and want to cut them out of the whole job hunt process once and for all, the good news is they really can’t because there’s always going to be a need for experts in finding talent and activating those passive candidates along with a lot of other headwork recruiters can help with and I don’t really need to go into why recruitment is here to stay, that’s a different conversation. But if we drill a bit further with candidates and look beyond this emotionally impulsive grudge they have against recruiters, we can see that all they want (as a start) is to work with someone who knows what they’re talking about, and that’s where it gets simple.

We have gone and complicated things by trying to think hard and come out with ideas in our own head on how to make things good for the candidates without speaking to candidates, how do we attract them? how do I make this job advert sexy enough? etc.. but really all candidates want to know is am I, as a recruiter, being transparent with them? do I know my client and their work environment or I just skimmed some information off of their website and I’m still to have my first chat with the hiring manager after I get interest from this candidate? Do I really know the role and the tech involved or did I just google some stuff and circled the buzzwords used in this industry or just fished some information from a few candidates who will not pick up my calls now? These tricks might have worked with those candidates fresh out of uni and looking to get their first commercial job, or those who are just desperate and need an immediate placement. But for the remaining 90% of candidates in this niche, they can now look through this, matter of fact it’s gotten so bad they don’t even want any recruiters getting through to them.

How do we solve this? Educate yourself, be informed about the tech field, the client, their requirements, and the candidates. Take the time to focus on particular needs your client has and don’t try to be a glorified body for hire to lift any dirty work they might have. Be a little selective in terms of the markets you want to work in, this will allow you to learn more on the technologies, the different client needs, and most importantly what makes candidates tick in these particular markets. Once you do this you’ll be able to build a reputation that beats any AI or marketing automation tooling out there that’s made for attracting candidate. You will be able to naturally make job adverts, or send out emails which directly appeal to your candidate pool and get them to respond and want to work with you and listen to what you have to offer.

I will expand further on these points in a future article where I will highlight the importance of being specialist rather than being generalist in tech recruitment.

If you’re interested in boosting your ability to attract the best talent and differentiate yourself in Tech recruitment markets, book a Free Strategy Session with me today.

This Planet

We Humans haven’t always been clever, looking at the history of humanity and the way we have evolved. there’s obviously an element of collective intelligence that is gradually growing as we go. For example some 60 years ago we were between two world wars  which both resulted in the deaths and scars of millions of people many of which haven’t completely shaken off the effects as yet. Looking back at those events was that something that could have been avoided if we humans were a little more evolved?

Naturally humans forget, while this could be one of the greatest bliss we have, it also has a catastrophic downside. I feel by now we seem to have forgotten about war and the scenes of misery it has brought to many countries and populations, and when the image is vague enough we will start preparing for the next clash.

The truth is humans will always be evolving, which means there is always something for us to learn. and the fact is we will probably never meet perfection.

We populate this planet going around using it’s resources. burning the excess, wasting food, polluting it’s air, to me we are like a virus, that has been spreading across the planet and it’s only a matter of time before we completely cripple it and render it inhabitable.

I lead with this dark and grim image just to reflect how serious the situation we find ourselves in today. Right now I see humans putting so much effort and money to go out in space and explore other galaxies which have the potential for incubating life. while I am a deep advocate of science and all research, but we have a perfectly functional home for us, rather than or before spending billions every year to go digging around the universe looking for potential homes, wouldn’t we rather spend all this money in fixing the the damage we’ve done so far, bring it to halt and make sure this planet is sustained for the future and next generations? because this is a chance we own. our search across the universe is a gamble.

The first step and key to achieving anything in life is awareness. To deal with a problem or improve a certain situation you have to be aware of it’s existence, and be aware that there could possibly be a solution if you have a solid plan. We have to be aware of the current problem first and foremost, we need to realise that this planet isn’t going to last long if we keep at this destructive pattern. our population isn’t decreasing, it’s growing, everything is expanding and growing, and the more people populate the earth the wider becomes out problem if we do not manage this growth and the way we utilise this planet’s resources.

We can start by spreading more  awareness among groups and individuals, mass campaigns to make everyone aware of the gravity of the current situation, get everyone to be more invested in the well-being of the coming generations to walk this earth. also as mentioned previously all the money and funds are being raised and pent and arguably wasted in research of the universe, this can be slightly channelled to be more focused on sustaining the planet and improving the ways we maintain our resources. we can teach young generations that they only need to use what they need. you don’t have to waste a hole bottle of shampoo when you’re showering, you don’t have to buy a plastic cup for your coffee every single morning or 3 times a day.

When these resources run out we are going to turn against each other and world war all over again. Because when humans become desperate they fall back to their primitive nature  chucking all evolution they attained against the wall.

Plague.com

I remember back in the days when I didn’t have any phone or laptop, I only had a desktop computer, and the internet was an exceptional commodity not anyone could afford. I used to come home patiently waiting to switch on my machine, sign in, and start chatting away. I would find messages from people, friends I have met online, waiting for me, checking on me and warmly greeting me. Everyone had this hub they come to in the evening, and everyone would chat with everyone at these times. It was time that I enjoyed because it was limited, and everyday I set in my head what I intend to achieve something specific during this time. “I want to ask someone out today, I want to get a date today,  share my interests with someone, and know their likes and dislikes”. Things like this are in my mind before I start my “Internet time”, every session had specific minutes, that you actually achieve at the end of the day.

This makes me think how social media these days is just plaguing our society, these days you are always connected, constantly logged in, you have a machine that’s always running, just waiting for you to suck your soul and brush your brains away, on this small device you can achieve many useful tasks. These days you can order food through the phone, apply for a job through the phone, meet your soul mate, make friends, and get married over the internet, next thing you know people are going to have babies through the phone.

You also have all your social media Apps where you can communicate with the world, this is where the “social plague” kicks in,  it’s called social media but it’s actually anti social, where people are isolated from the real world by connecting through the cyber space using their tiny  electronic portals, only looking at virtual objects, creating virtual ties, and indulging feelings triggered by virtual realities. How is this by any form or logic social? we don’t need to speak to each other anymore, we just text from one room to the next, we don’t need to ask the good old how are you? because we know how is it going through our Facebook wall, we don’t need to ask what did you have for lunch, we can see that on Instagram, what music do you like? oh right I’ve already checked your Google plus page and I know.

This conveyor belt that’s called Facebook, it is truly an obsessive pit, if you don’t keep throwing your babies or food onto it, you’ll be forgotten, you will feel like an outcast while you actually are in the real world, but you only had your likes to make you feel better about yourself.

Get on the train, try to count how many of the people are actually reading a book and not obsessively browsing their phones. Just walk in public one day and try to observe how many people are walking like iZmobies all deeply gaping into their phones and not even looking where they’re going, sometimes I think of just stepping in front of someone and see if they are can move away from danger. And this actually reminds me of the situation of humanity in general, we’re just walking into a pit of darkness without even looking or knowing where we’re headed.

Our societies are degrading by the day, I can only imagine what kind of decline we’ll witness in the level of talent, achievements, and creative thinking with people only occupied with their phones, the people inside them, and the food they are going to post about. With you connected 24/7 to the internet, the amount of time you’ll waste is dangerously colossal, and how many things you will miss out on in the real world? you have no interest in your real interests any more, you just want to get on and chat on, post and text, how will you be able to concentrate on anything any time or productively allocate your time to your daily tasks?

I want those times back where you can actually achieve something during your day and not just dissipate your energy and thoughts into the cyber black hole, this addiction that we grow everyday is something more destructive than anything ever plagued the human plane. We might not see or touch it’s effects but in time this tumor is growing under the skin until it explodes and there is no fixing it because it’s too late and too damaging.

Facebook

I think Facebook is destroying our social life,

birthday’s have no meaning any more,

Facebook is going to tell you when is anyone’s birthday and you can’t actually point out who genuinely remembers your birthday and cares about you.

And the fact that we sign in to Facebook on a daily basis, we read news about our friends everyday,

so every single step they do is delivered right to our home page, and this eliminates the need for us to directly communicate with each other,

we need not to get in touch with each other and ask about our lives and new developments, because it’s all there published on our blue and white.

My Favourite Quotes

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“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

“To improve is to change, to perfect is to change often.”

―Winston Churchill

“Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.”

― Napoleon Hill