Ask Steve – EP1 – How do I find engineers?
Hello everybody! Steve here from Recruitment School and welcome to another session of Ask Steve.
Today, we have a question from Gordon. Gordon has asked “Hi Steve, my name is Gordon. I’m an Engineering Recruiter. I work in the Sydney market and I am finding it very hard to
find candidates at the moment. Can you please help me understand how I can get candidates and good candidates to apply to my roles?”
Gordon, there’s lots of questions or there’s lots of episodes on this topic that are floating around so I suggest you go and have a look at the other ones, the other sessions of Ask Steve and especially the ones around LinkedIn, Job boards, Ghosting those sort of things. But here we go again we’ll talk about it again.
Gordon, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion and I don’t know this about you but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that you are advertising your roles on job boards and you think that’s recruitment and I can tell you right now Gordon there’s nowhere near recruitment. If you think that is decent recruitment then you’re not gonna make it as a recruiter. I’m really sorry to be that blunt with you but you need to hear it like this. Recruitment is about finding people not people finding you. It’s really important that you become good at finding people you are sorting the majority of what you do for a living in recruitment is sourcing candidates. If you can’t source candidates but you can pick up roles. What’s the use of having them? If you’re just gonna put an ad on a job board like the Human Resources Department of the organization did 3, 4, 5, 6 times and you gonna basically replicate that ad. Then what are you actually doing? And what are you trying to be paid for? If you aren’t trying to be paid by placing an ad on a job board as I said before it’s not gonna work. So then we swing around Steve, I’m doing. I’m doing more than that I’m on LinkedIn. I’m reaching out to people on LinkedIn and even they don’t content they don’t reply. I know they don’t. Go and have a look at the episode on LinkedIn. You need to… There’s a story developing here guys. There’s a story. LinkedIn is a fantastic way to actually find people, it’s beautiful. You can find the names of these people. But here’s the thing right? LinkedIn has a problem and as much as I’m a massive fan of LinkedIn and I don’t want you to turn away from LinkedIn but LinkedIn is polluted with recruiters. Absolutely polluted with them! So every single day you’re one of 400 recruiters that are reaching out to these candidates, saying Hey I’ve got a great job for you can we can, we catch up wanna talk to you about how I’m gonna look after your career. And then they call them all back, the candidates call them all back and then nothing comes from it.
It’s like the boy that cried wolf. You should know that, that story, where there’s a little Shepherd boy who’s meant taking care of a flock of sheep and he runs into town all the time because he wants some attention says Oh my God! There’s a wolf attaching attacking the sheep. There’s a wolf attacking the sheep and all of the the townsfolk from the village run out with the their axes and their sickles and all that sort of stuff and they’re gonna take out the the wolf. And they get in there’s nothing. Then one day, one day there is actually a wolf attacking the sheep and he runs into town and says my sheep are being attacked! My sheep are being attacked! And they just looked at him and said yeah you keep on telling us that so we’re not, and we come out and we waste our time. And now we’re not going today. And then all of a sudden he lost all his sheep. This is what’s going on in LinkedIn we’re finding that people are being approached all the time Hey Steve, come and talk to me. I’ve got a great job for you and then nothing happens. Contingent role. Disappears. The recruiter doesn’t follow them up and just becomes a complete waste of their time. There’s three of the most stressful things we do as human beings. What are they? The first one changing relationships, and the second one changing jobs, the third one is changing houses. Changing where we live cause they all disrupt our routine. So if changing jobs is one of the three most stressful things we do as an adult. These people going through this process when you’re reaching out to them and the whole market is reaching out to them and nothing happens. It’s depleting their emotional energy. It’s hard work for them. So when you’re now calling them and saying, You know Jack, I’ve got a fantastic role for you. They’re saying on your bark. I’m not interested. Too many people call me and nothing ever comes from it. So now what you need to do Gordon is go around LinkedIn by all means find their name and by all means reach out to them on LinkedIn. But then use your Boolean Searching to go to Google and find that person’s email address. Find their way, their home phone number. Find or their mobile phone number, should I say. Find their direct number. Find something that you can contact them directly. Does that make sense?
So you’re not then relying on them to answer their, all their LinkedIn request which they had 632,000 from today and you’re not getting a response. That’s what you need to do. You need to go around LinkedIn by all means find them. Then find them outside LinkedIn and good if you’re just relying on on post and pray because that’s effectively what posting a job board is you post the job and pray that somebody applies. Then you’re gonna struggle my friend. So become hungry start chasing these people. You’re getting paid to find them, go and find them. Find them track them down, hunt them down that’s what it’s all about and as a market tightens up your job to find these people. It’s gonna get harder and harder cause people are gonna be hang on to the jobs that they’ve got. They know the market’s tight at the moment. They’re not gonna be leaving because you need. I want safety in my job. I wanna make sure that I’m gonna get paid every week, every month or whatever that frequency I get paid. That’s what it’s all about.
So Gordon, go hard mate. Find these people don’t let them find you. If you don’t know what you’re doing Recruitment Ninja covers all this for you. Recruitment Ninja is our training program for people who have less than 2 years experience. We assume that after two years, you actually know what you’re talking about and you should know what you’re doing. But if you don’t go and jump into Recruitment Ninja and it’ll help you out with this. I hope that helps. If you have any other questions. Please go to recruitmentschool.com.au. Click on the Ask Steve button. Fill in the form. The question will come through to our team that will turn it into a that will schedule it for a video and then we will let you know when it’s uploaded.
Thanks very much for your time. Look after yourself. Be kind to each other and I will talk to you in the next episode of Ask Steve.
Take care.
