QUESTION: My issue is understanding how solo operators have freelancers reach out to potential candidates and do a lot of the grunt research on their company’s behalf? Do they have company emails and associated branding on LinkedIn? Are they reaching out as just a random recruiter and then referring the interested candidate? I would love any detail and light you can shed on the specifics of these processes. Can you please overview the specifics on how to choose what tasks to allocate to inexpensive contractors and go through a sample workflow?
ANSWER: Some people might do it that way and if my clients are doing it, they probably hide it from me because I would not recommend it. I do not think physically calling and doing the initial approach with a contractor from Upwork is the best idea.
The workflow for a contractor is really identifying the names and contact information of the candidates. I have had clients that have the contractor pull profiles off of LinkedIn on the candidate side. However, I do not recommend them reaching out because that is a quality issue. I am not saying it cannot be done and somebody can create the argument that they can do it. There are some telesales organizations that people have told me that they have had marginal success, but I do not know who they are. Maybe this is something I have just been stubborn with but we are doing an executive search and having somebody that I am not training being my voice is not something I am comfortable with. It was challenging for me to give up doing any of the recruiting 15 or 20 years ago, but to have somebody that is not under my locus of control, where I can check in on their quality making those outreaches on my behalf, I am not comfortable with.
But the other things that a contractor can do, and one of the things that even a solo recruiters should be outsourcing, is marketing. I do not mean marketing as in, the term marketing and recruiting tends to be, calling. What I mean by marketing is marketing, sending out content.
If I go to any recruiter’s website, there most likely will be the home page and then right across the top it is going to say About Us, then Client Services or Clients, and then Candidates or Candidate Services. The really forward reaching recruiters have a Blog, but when I click on the downlink on the blog you ay find the last time it was updated was 2011 or 2013. They are not going up every week as a blog should to effectively work with Google. There is also no opt-in page, therefore the only way for anyone to leave their information is on the Contact Us page.
Creating and posting blog content is another fantastic thing you can outsource. Many people ask me, what would they write about? They can write about niches. They can interview you and transcribe it and make it an article. There are a whole bunch of ways you can easily have a contractor create content for you for an investment of $10, $15, or $20 an hour, maybe 10 hours a month.
We have a done for you service. I am not here to sell that, but I would have a marketing program that is completely outsourced. You can find authors and web people who know how to set up blogs on Upwork, so it is not just researchers.
So, contractors can do a variety of tasks, it is not all LinkedIn. Again, I would not recommend having them reach out on the phone.
Recent Comments