How Recruitment Firm Owners Get Hiring Managers Waiting For Them Instead of Chasing Them

It's the first working week of January.

You're back at the desk with a coffee, a target for the year and a CRM full of people you haven't spoken to since the summer. December was dead. November wasn't much better, because you were flat out finishing the roles you already had.

So you start again. Same as last January. You dust off the list, write a message that opens with "hope you had a good Christmas", and send it to people who can barely remember who you are.

Sometime this month, a lot of people in this country will see a line of red lorries covered in lights on the telly and decide Christmas has started.

Coca-Cola first ran Holidays Are Coming in 1995. An agency in Michigan made it. Industrial Light and Magic, the Star Wars effects people, built the trucks. Thirty-one years on, the trucks, the lights and the tune are all still there.

Most people assume it has run every year since. It hasn't.

In the early 2000s, Coca-Cola restructured, moved to making its adverts country by country, and the trucks got parked. The advert wasn't pulled for failing. It just stopped being made.

The public noticed. People rang Coke consumer line asking where it had gone, because for them that advert was the start of Christmas. In 2007 it came back, and it has run every year since.

The trucks have toured the UK since 2010. This year, towns have been voting to get a visit. People are actively campaigning for a drinks lorry to park in their high street.

Coke doesn't go looking for Christmas customers. It turns up when it always turns up, and the market is already waiting for it.

Prospecting only when you're quiet

Most recruitment firm owners run their pipeline like Bonfire Night. A loud burst, then dark.

When the desk goes quiet, they go hard. Posts every day for a fortnight, a batch of messages, a few calls to old contacts. Then a couple of roles land, delivery takes over, and it all stops. Nobody hears from them for three months. When the roles are filled and the desk goes quiet again, they start from zero.

Most recruiters who only prospect when they're quiet end up with a business that runs in lumps. A strong quarter, then a weak one. Busy in spring, panicking by August. And every restart is colder than the last, because the people they went quiet on have been approached by someone else, moved jobs, or simply forgotten them.

Hiring managers rarely choose a recruiter on the day the role opens. They call the one who's already in their head. If you disappeared in October, you won't be in there in January.

Why owners stop

Most owners don't stop showing up because it stopped working. They stop because they got bored of it.

I'd put money on the people least excited by that Coke advert in 2001 being the ones who'd sat through it in every planning meeting since 1995. The audience saw it once a year and loved it. When it went, the audience were the ones who picked up the phone.

Your market works the same way. You've written about counter offers forty times. You're sick of it. Your prospect has seen it once, if that. You will be tired of your own message long before most of your market has noticed you're saying it.

So owners keep switching. New angle, new format, new tool, new campaign. Then a quiet quarter while they work out the next one. The industry calls that refreshing your approach. Mostly it's an owner who got bored and called it strategy.

We've all done it. I did it for years.

Next year's pipeline is being built now

The pipeline you'll have in March is being decided now, in the weeks you're too busy to think about it.

From the inside, turning up the same way every week feels repetitive. From the buyer's chair it looks like someone who is always there. And when his budget reopens and he needs two heads by the end of Q1, always there is the only thing that gets your name said out loud.

Most recruiters who go quiet when they're busy end up chasing every January. The owners who fix it have a different January. The first calls of the year are inbound, from people who have been reading them through the autumn and kept them in mind over Christmas. When the budget gets signed off, they're already the name on the list.

That's what Perpetual Pipeline™ does once it's properly installed. The phone ringing stops depending on whether you had a quiet month.

One recruiter we worked with had a list of around 4,000 prospects he had never emailed. Years of contacts, sitting there. He was worried about annoying them. When he finally sent them something worth reading, some unsubscribed. He also grew the number of contractors he had out by 16% in just over two months, without a single cold call.

His verdict: "I am quite happy with the prospects that no longer wish to receive my emails. If annoying some of them increases my contractors by 16%, I must do it more frequently."

Four thousand people who had never heard from him. The audience never got sick of the trucks. The only complaints came when the trucks stopped coming.

Before and after

Before, every busy spell is followed by a dry one. You're the only engine, so when you're delivering, nothing new is coming in. January means a cold list, a warm coffee and a message that starts with an apology for being out of touch.

After, the market expects to hear from you, because it always has. Replies start with "I've been meaning to get in touch." A busy month no longer wrecks the next quarter. The roles you win come from people who already know how you think.

Among the owners we work with, one has built a LinkedIn audience of 140,000 and now has a calendar that fills itself.

And the week between Christmas and New Year is actually off. Not spent at the kitchen table drafting a "new year, new hiring plans?" message to send on the second.

This week

Open your CRM.

Count the hiring managers you have spoken to at least once and haven't contacted since the end of the summer.

Write the number down. Don't send anything yet.

That's how many people are about to hear from someone else first in January.

If you went quiet from today until the middle of January, how many of your prospects would actually notice?

Drop the number in the comments. Honest ones only.

Coca-Cola came back because people rang up asking where it had gone. Your prospects won't ring to ask where you went. They'll just use whoever turned up.

If you counted your list and didn't like the number, that's exactly what we work through on the Fast Track call. Thirty minutes on your business: where your pipeline stalls when you get busy, and what goes in first so January doesn't start from zero. You leave knowing what to switch on before the budgets reopen.

Book your spot at makemoreplacements.com/call.