QUESTION: MPC marketing calls versus general marketing calls that explain what your firm specializes in.  Which one is better?  I have been using MPCs.  – Eric

ANSWER: MPCs by light years.  In 12 of my 15 years recruiting (for 3 years I was on and off a desk), I made a sum total of zero general marketing calls explaining what my firm specialized in.  If I am a hiring manager, I am rolling my eyes, unless I am in dire straits.  If it is a voicemail, I am probably not going to return your call.

I did a panel interview with hiring managers who were not even in my space.  A bunch of friends of mine, we put together a small conference with about 8 recruiters there.  We brought 3 VPs in from 3 different market segments and 3 different job functions.  They were all VPs.  One was say a VP of Engineering, a VP of Sales, and I think one was a general manager of a division of a manufacturing company, completely unrelated.  They all said the same thing.  They hate those calls.

The calls they like are twofold.  One, they want to hear about great talent.  Two, they want to be kept up to date of any rumors and things going on in the market that may affect their business.  Honestly, I did not do that a lot.  I did a lot of MPC calls, the structure of those calls can be found in an earlier blog post.

Not to say that the general marketing, talking about your specialization – it will work, it is just from my experience significantly less effective and it tends to put you in the vendor zone with hiring managers because, frankly, a lot of recruiters do make that call.  If  you make that call and it works for you, I am not going to tell you to stop.  I might say try this too and see which one is more effective for you.  I just know that most of the industry does a lot of that type of call and the people that respond to it are in dire straits.  They are harder to get return call rates, and they are harder to dig and probe for what the hiring manager’s true needs are.