At any one time in your career as a recruitment consultant, it’s more than likely that you will hit what’s known as a dry patch when it comes to finding suitable candidates. Many people who haven’t worked inside of the industry think that it’s easy to keep gathering a constant pool of quality and suitable candidates.
You can see why some people may have this logic, after all everybody needs an income to carry on their life don’t they?! Although in most cases this is correct, there may be times when the candidates that you have sourced aren’t suitable. They may not be experienced enough, may have blemishes on their record or you may just not want to put them forward for a variety of reasons.
Putting unsuitable, or candidates that aren’t likely to be given a job wastes both your time and that of your client. As a recruitment consultant, the last thing that you want to do is to keep presenting a poor calibre of candidate to your client. If they loose faith in you, the amount of vacancies that you will receive from them will soon begin to become less and less.
So if you are struggling to find new candidates, it could be time to take a look at those that you have placed before. To do this effectively, you are going to need to have been in the recruitment business a while to ensure that you have developed a good sense of character. But if you are relatively new, but can call upon a partner to help you with this process, you can be just as successful with it.
Take a look over the list of candidates that have been placed in the same area or field within the last two or three years. Once you have found a list of candidates that you think may be suitable, give them a call. In the recruitment industry you will find that history does repeat itself and after a few years, the very same candidates that you placed in vacancies are likely to be looking for, or at least open to the idea of working in pastures new.
If they aren’t looking for new work, or are happy in there current role, there is no harm in asking them if they can think of somebody that would be suitable. For example they may have an old work colleague who is looking to be placed, or even a current co-worker.
If you have dealt with the individual before, you will have an idea of the kind of person they are and whether or not you can judge their sense of character. If you think they can, contact the person they have recommended. Even if they aren’t suitable for the current vacancy that you have, they may be in the near future.