Four Steps to Network with Recruiters

Are you struggling to network with recruiters? Want to get on their radar?

“A friend of mine has recruiters contacting her right and left,” our new client Amika related. “I can’t figure it out. Our backgrounds, qualifications, and experience are nearly identical, and I never hear from recruiters. How does she network with recruiters so well?”

It’s really not a secret. If you want to get on the radar of recruiters and have them calling you with opportunities, you must build relationships with them. The friend in this story likely has a long history of networking with recruiters and it’s paying dividends for her.

With the Covid-19 pandemic, networking has changed. If you want to quickly get connected with recruiters, there are still many things you can do to increase your visibility. Here are 4 steps to quickly network with recruiters and get on their radars now.

1. Maximize Your LinkedIn Profile

In pre-pandemic times, recruiters used LinkedIn as well as other methods of networking and developing relationships. Now, if you aren’t on LinkedIn, you will be left behind. And with so many other job seekers vying for attention, you want to make sure you have every advantage.

Endeavor has the knowledge and resources to maximize your LinkedIn profile. Don’t just be discoverable  –  Have an advantage over other more passive profiles. Your agent will help you adjust settings that make your profile more visible to recruiters and HR directors. Your LinkedIn profile should reflect the best version of you – from your photo and banner to recommendations and endorsements.

A recruiter spends a few seconds on your profile to confirm your skills and qualifications match what they need. Be sure you make an impression from the beginning with your summary, experience, and key words.

Once your LinkedIn and resume are ready to go, it’s time to reach out to recruiters and start conversations with these very important job gatekeepers. Don’t just wait for them to come to you.

Your Endeavor team will work with you to identify recruiters and recruiting agencies that represent your field and industry. We then will help you target the ones you best align with and our Data Team will gather their LinkedIn profile links, email addresses, and links to their company bios.

The next step is about starting conversations. Nervous about reaching out to someone you don’t know? You’re actually making the recruiter’s job easier by introducing yourself. Recruiters want to find qualified candidates as quickly as possible and get them hired. That’s how they get paid.

When you reach out to them and start a conversation, you project what kind of a candidate you will be for a position. If done well, it shows enthusiasm, responsibility, grit, and a bit of moxie. Don’t be afraid to reach out and introduce yourself.

Recruiters do return emails and phone calls, but when they have a need. Just because the recruiter didn’t immediately respond to your LinkedIn message, doesn’t mean you went unnoticed. Chances are you are registered in their internal database and, when there is an open opportunity, the recruiter will contact you.

The best tactic is to be consistent and plant seeds. Keep reaching out and following up. Remember, when you network with recruiters, you are developing a relationship and relationships take time and effort.

Recruiters will call you and it will probably be when you don’t expect it – so work with your agent to be ready! You want to be sure you have done your homework on them and the positions they offer. Think about it from the recruiters’ perspective. What will make their job easier? Finding the best candidate quickly. Have your value proposition ready so you can brag a bit about your successes and skills.

Amika’s Success

So, what happened with Amika? Our new client only needed to make a couple of adjustments to her LinkedIn profile to let recruiters know she was open to opportunities. She prepared her responses to talk to a recruiter and was ready before she reached out. Her Endeavor agent helped her identify executive recruiters in her field and the Endeavor Data Team sent her a list of contacts.

For the next few weeks, Amika made a practice of reaching out every day to several different recruiters. She connected with them on LinkedIn and began sending email and LinkedIn messages. It took some time, but the recruiters started calling. Several mentioned how impressed they were with Amika’s professional persistence.

One recruiter told her he gets a lot of messages from job seekers nowadays. What is the main way he chooses which candidates he reaches out to? Only the job seekers who have attempted to contact him multiple times. He told Amika that if they didn’t care enough to reach out more than once, he didn’t care either.

Recruiters are just one tool in your toolbox, but an important one. Connect with them. Send an email of introduction. Register in their internal candidate database. It’s a lot of work but with our resources we helped her shorten it considerably.

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