How To Find Those Illusive Candidates Like A Liam Neeson From ‘Taken’ Pro
Picture Source: LinkedIn.com
Hands up who’s seen ‘Taken? If you haven’t, you’ve almost definitely seen the meme.
Liam’s character tells his daughter’s kidnapper “I don’t know who you are…I possess a set of very unique skills…I will find you!”
Although most of us aren’t trained contract killers or assassins (presumably), most recruiters should also possess a set of skills, that is the ability to find that needle in the haystack, that golden balls candidate that NONE of your competitors have got on their database, that ticket to landing a 5 figure fee! (DISCLAIMER – yes candidates are people with feelings etc…).
The reality is however, many don’t. As good and effective as an agencies training might be, and the vast majority are excellent by the way – being able to find those candidates can be incredibly difficult.
These individuals are hidden, tucked away behind stable careers, good salaries, brilliant work culture, management that gives a shit and so on.
They’re not in that 12% or 13% represented in the above picture.
They’re not the ones reaching out BEGGING for a new opportunity.
Without being rude you can see that 25% anywhere. Just visit any usual job board CV database and BOOM, hello!
The issue, is that everyone’s got access, it’s like a goddamn “hook-a-duck”, the real skill lies in reaching that coveted 45%, and even dare I say those 15%.
Let’s be honest, even those “completely satisfied” candidates would possibly at least keep an open mind IF presented with the right opportunity.
“But Dan!” I hear you cry. “How do I do that?!”
You absolutely have to have a well thought out, laser-targeted and “Agent 47” style executed Social Media Marketing campaign.
“But Dan, I’m all over my Social media marketing”…Really? Then why aren’t you in front of these people?
It’s so much more than posting to LinkedIn or forums etc.
Here’s what you need to do.
- Get your SEO right! SEO and SMM are like bread and butter! For optimum results there needs to be strong cohesion between both!
- Really think about your target candidate. Where do they hang out? What are their typical interests? What are their B2C buying personas. What are their typical motivators. Pushes. Pulls. What did they eat for breakfast! (Too far?!)
- Once you’ve really drilled down in to that you have to create content that they are more likely than not to engage with.
- You’ve got to sell sell sell the opportunity as succinctly as possible with the space/time you have. Think video specs as a way to enthuse and engage.
- Sign up to the advertising facility on each of the platforms your targets are likely to be.
- Set a realistic budget!Don’t scrape here, if your client is looking for a golden balls candidate, and you’ve settled on a 20-30% fee you need to do the maths.Is it feasible to spend £1k on advertising if your fee (for some reason – this is only an example) is £2k?
- You’re going to lose money on that deal so probably not. If you can get a £10/£15K+ fee, then you’re happier to spend £3-£5K.
- Run your ads/sponsored posts.
- ..Don’t stop there. Tweak adjust. Tweak adjust. Tweak adjust again. Study the analytics. Study the conversions. Can you increase then? Are you getting enough traction? Is your content as relevant today as it was last week?
- Keep going. Once you’ve cracked it, replicate.
This method is exactly how I helped several clients create in excess of £50k extra revenue last year. If you know someone who needs to see this, give it a share. Email them the link. Shout it from your window.
If you’d like to know more on how I can help you do the same – come and say hello!
Why You Should Absolutely Outsource!
Of course, I’m big advocate of outsourcing work, after all, it’s the back bone of my business. If firms didn’t outsource their SEO to me – I’d have to get a proper job!
But I get it, you’re scared of out outsourcing. So many questions.
“How can I let go, I’m a control freak”, or “How absurd to think that an outsider can understand my business” or “Outsourcing means there’s no safety net – at least in-house means accountability”, I could go on. But I won’t.
The reality is, you have every right to be scared. There are SO many horror stories out there about errors made by or caused by an outsourcing outfit it could really make your skin crawl if you let it.
But think of it like this….
YOU are an outsourced service. YOU are an outsourcer. Yes…YOU and your business.
Where would YOU be if your clients didn’t outsource their requirements to you? You’d be in the same place I would – up shit creek!
The truth is you and I, we’re pretty similar. We are a necessary “evil”(I use that phrase lightly of course) and we (usually) are a service easily farmed out to someone else.
Think about your selling points, WHY do clients utilise your service.
· To save time
· To save money
· They’re too busy
· They’re not the experts!
Well, those are the exact same reasons you would work with me. You’ve got a business to run and recruitment digital marketing can be a slow, laborious and time-consuming task.
You want to make money, not waste it. Bad marketing is like a bad hire – it will cost you in the long run.
Recruitment is very hands on, fast paced, reactive – refer to the above point.
You are an expert recruiter. You know your shit. That’s why you clients pay you £1000’s in fees. You are not (usually) a marketing expert, and SEO expert and so on. You need the expertise a real marketer can bring.
You might argue “Well I have a Social Media Expert in-house”…do you? Or do you have someone that has a degree in Zoology who can string a sentence together and knows how to post to Instagram stories??
Because my friend that is NOT an expert. My 16 year old daughter can do that – I wouldn’t pay her £18k/pa plus because of that.
“Well I have an in-house marketing team” – that’s great, but what are you paying them for if the firm down the road are out-ranking you? Essentially, I work WITH in-house teams to deliver value, I’m not looking to replace anyone, but rather absorb some of the workload and turn that in to real results.
Finally, outsourcing your digital marketing does not mean losing accountability. This is not a sales pitch – none of my blog posts are, however I will say this; Every single client I work with has their own log in to the back end of my system.
I believe in being 100% transparent, so you can see at every step of the way exactly what I and my team are up to. That’s all I’ll say on that for now.
If you know someone that needs to see this, give it share, email them the link etc.
On that note – join me on LinkedIn, Insta or add me on Facebook and let’s see what we can do together this year.
Peace!
Local SEO Case Study
Client Vertical – High St Generalist
Client Location – Leeds UK
Service Provided – Local SEO
Background
The Client is a high street generalist agency, predominantly high volume, low margin recruitment.
Typical roles are industrial biased – warehouse ops, production, pickers/packers and commercial temp desk.
The local, temp market place in which the Client operates is hugely competitive. The labour market is abundant and competition for client base is fierce. As is the norm in this field, margins are low but volume is higher.
The Client, as a relatively newly established outfit, was struggling to compete in an already inundated market. 100% of their consultants’ time was spent servicing 2 or 3 large clients. The fear was one of if/when these contracts were finished, where does the next client/vacancy come from.
The Client was ranked on page four of Google SERPS for keywords including “temp warehouse jobs Leeds” and variations of. Dominated by the larger corporates, they were unable to improve their rankings and were missing leads due to SERP results.
Solution Provided
Following initial consultation, it was decided that – as most of their work was in their local area, and they seldom chased business regionally or wider – a local SEO campaign was best, it was also the most comfortable in terms of their initial SEO budget.
Their on-site SEO (all the technical things like links, HTML/Alt tags etc) needed considerable work.
They had previously had a local SEO firm “look after this”, it became apparent they had employed the services of a “gig” SEO-er (someone who peddles their wares on freelancer websites) who was paid £150 to “SEO the website”.
In fact this individual had caused the Client’s site to be penalised by Google.by using “black hat” SEO techniques.
The first part of my job was to right the wrongs this person had made.
Then it was on to all of the on-page technical aspects were completed, penalties were eventually lifted and through the length of the campaign the emphasis was on creating sustainable, authoritative back links and conducting blog outreach. Directory submissions, Google+, Google My Business optimisation and reputation management.
Results Delivered
The client saw an immediate increase in traffic to their website. We targeted around 15 specific, long tail keywords and after the first 10 weeks, unique visitors per month rocketed from 20 to around 195. After month 4 the keyword groups were generating an extra 300 hits to the website and approaching the 12 month mark we are seeing search volume of around 8000.
The client has now moved to hover around the bottom of page 1/mid-section of Page 2 for their chosen keywords, which, whilst not yet in the “map pack” the Client will be re-contracting with a more aggressive SEO campaign to really tackle that prime space competition.
The Local SEO campaign has resulted in an impressive ROI of £8.70 per £1 spent, so they’re now in a position to reinvest a proportion of those profits into a higher-grade SEO package.
It is expected that this client will increase their temps out figure by threefold in 2019.
I can help you replicate the type of ROI this client achieved – all you need to do is make a move.
