Recruiting Reminder; Relationships Start by CONNECTING

As I start this open letter to recruiters my first hope is that it's not filtered out by the LinkedIn police. My goal is not to lessen our reliance on LinkedIn, but to shift the mindset to one focused on relationships and CONNECTIONS. Inspiration came from an InMail I received asking about my interest in a sourcing position. Sounds simple enough; we all know the drill: run a search, find great candidates, send a batch of InMails, and work the leads who respond. However, today I checked out the recruiter who messaged me (presumably a solid recruiter), and my 1st thought was simple: why didn't he send me a connection request?

Thinking now shifted to all the InMails I have seen sent over the years, and how many were preceded or followed by a personalized connection request? Not as many as I ho Are we connecting with those we are interesting in recruiting? How about those who apply; did you send a connection request to the top applicants? The interviewed candidates; are we connecting with them in advance? Right about now I have a slew of readers/recruiters with all the common responses: "what if we don't select them," "I focus connections on my close relationships,: or even "I don't want candidates stalking me" and YES I have heard that one.

It's been a while since my 1st days as a staffing recruiter at TEKsystems, but the foundation taught to me then was to BUILD RELATIONSHIPS. Yes, that was pre-LinkedIn, but the lesson was simple. Get to know people, understand them and their career goals, acknowledge career changes and new skills, be a resource and when they time and opportunity is right that relationship will be a hire. So what happened to connecting, engaging with candidates, endorsing skills, commenting on posts, sharing relevant content, and congratulating new jobs - you know building relationship.

My challenge to my fellow recruiters; let's start connecting. Personalize your invite to start the conversation. Get to know your candidates career goals. When you schedule someone for an interview send a connection request. InMails are not going away and they will always have there place, but let's bring the personalization back to recruiting.