Recruiters Connection

Hi Danny,
I have some numbers questions for you. How many voicemails, emails, texts, Linked-In requests, and so on do you suggest attempting before deciding to stop calling that same person? Do you increase the number of attempts depending on the method or are all counted equal? What is the spacing you suggest between attempts? Is the number of attempts or timing different for candidates versus employers? Do you suggest calling the same person twice in one day or possibly more? Is the suggested number of attempts different for a situational biz dav call versus an MPC call? I understand every situation is different, BUT what is the “general” principle here?

Danny’s response:
If I really understood the difference between harassment and tenacity, between entreaty and demand, between shining a light and bringing the heat, I would not have a divorce lawyer in my fave five…but let’s use this principle as our heuristic:

Better to be Forgiven than Forgotten

Everyone redlines at different RPM’s…your job is to push limits, then back down gracefully when you have crossed them. You can’t know this until you have gone too far. I always tell managers in seminars that I can teach a recruiter to throttle back once they have crossed lines, but I can’t teach someone to have the guts to cross the line.

As for metrics, I think you need to attempt contact via multiple channels. Voice, text, email and social networking, if they are in LinkedIn or Facebook. The rules are the same in my view.

1. One contact, per channel, every other day. (so a voice, a text and an email on one day is the limit)

2. Clients are pursued, with ever increasing rhetorical charm, for two weeks, then forget for a month, try again

3. Candidates take this more personally, and after one week of attempting to get a response, I will wait a month, with the exception of an occasional email informing them they have given me a complex. (or, or in my case, another complex)

This whole process is subjective, and the metrics are guidelines more than hard data points. Was Romeo the ultimate romantic or a stalker in tights talking iambic pentameter trash? Who is to say?

For the better part of two decades I have arrived at hotels with recruiters going in for conferences. After a few years I noticed something. The lower the producer, the more likely they were to go through the revolving doors at the entrance, the top producers opened the single door to the side of the revolving doors.. To the top person, forward isn’t forward unless you get to push.