How to cold call an Internal Recruiter

I get cold calls.

A lot of cold calls.

Most make me want to pull my teeth out without anaesthesia.

They generally go like this:

• "Hey, we saw you were recruiting for X, we specialise in this area, can we send you some candidates"
• "I've got this candidate, do you want to interview them" (Usually unconnected to any need we actually have)
• "I saw this role has been open for X time, can I send you someone"

I had one this week - "I spoke with someone in your organisation, they said you were having trouble and to reach out". They did speak to someone but were actually told I had things in hand.

(As a quick aside, if you tell me you've spoken to a colleague I'm going to ask who. If you can't name that person, I'm going to assume you're lying and never work with you. If you do give me a name, you can guarantee I'm going to check.)

Cold business development is tough in any industry. Especially in areas like agency recruitment where you're competing against internal teams, other agencies, small or no agency budget and a whole host of other factors that decide whether you are going to be able to work with a company. I've been there, done it, got the t-shirt - and in fact it was one of the reasons I left agency recruitment.

If you do manage to get hold of me, stating that you have candidates for a role, or you work in my area just isn't interesting. Nearly every recruiter who cold calls me says the exact same things. "Industry Experts". "Best database of candidates". "Best service". "Niche".

They are more interested in talking about themselves than understanding any challenges I may have. Most don't even take the time to understand if I have any challenges at all before trying to sell to me with the same tired questions. And if I say we don't have any needs, they ask the same questions anyway!

If you want to stand out in the recruitment world - focus on 2 things. What makes you different and how can you add value.

Different is tricky - ultimately all recruitment agencies use pretty much the same tools, have access to the same candidates and do the same thing as every other agency out there. I've not yet met one agency that has convinced me they are different in how they do business.

Different will probably comes down to the person at the keyboard, working out who is a fit for a role, what will be the best way to sell X role to a candidate and Y candidate to an employer. Focus on your specific industry experience, name drop success stories (and I do mean name drop, telling me you helped an unnamed local business with a similar challenge, without naming the competitor or the challenge, will have the opposite effect you're hoping for).

Another war story, an agency rang me a while back stating they had best in class AI. They told me this AI took the key terms from the job description and matched it against candidates in their database. It sounded really familiar to the boolean logic a Recruitment Consultant would use, just... automated. Badly. Trying to shove popular tools and terms into messaging will make you stand out, but not in a good way.

Adding value comes in a variety of ways - probably as many as there are internal recruiters. It could be sharing information I don't have. It could be helping with a challenging timescale. It could even be as simple as being the nicest recruiter I might pick the phone up to that week. What do you have that either I don't - especially if it's too niche, boring, long winded or expensive for me to get by myself.

We've only used an agency once since I've been at Searchlight, if you want to stand out, consider doing what they did:

• Cold called once, stated they specialise in Cyber recruitment and could they share a relevant market report they had created
• Left me alone. That's it. No check ins, no "how's that job going", no "I found this perfect candidate down the back of the sofa". They waited for a time they could add value
• When a role had genuinely been open and advertised for a few weeks, they asked if they could send one candidate who they were pretty sure fit the bill
• The one candidate they sent had plenty of experience in a relevant and leading company, had dealt with the customers we were looking to target and was based in a key geography for us
• That one candidate went to interview, was offered, is still with the business now and has been promoted to a more senior role.

They showed an in-depth knowledge of our area (I mean us as a company, not security in general), a great understanding of who we are and what we did, and what skills we would need to hire for. They understood the challenge in that they were external, we hadn't budgeted for agency fees and that they were competing against me to fill the job. And through all of this, they were just good people to do business with - they did what they said they would, did it on time and communicated well (and with a good sense of humour) throughout.

In contrast most recruiters who call me have no idea who I am, what we do, what we might need and where can they as an agency add value.

In a world full of clones, take the time to understand your market, your customers and your candidates and you'll stand out.