Tactical Advice for Recruiting Success

EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW

Voice mail and e-mail can be powerful recruiting and marketing tools-but only if you treat them like their first cousin, direct marketing.

Until a few years ago, the term "direct marketing" referred mainly to direct mail and telemarketing. Now that voice mail and e-mail are in common use, you can add them to the list of direct marketing techniques.

Direct marketing is based on the assumption that your message needs to reach so many people, it can't be personally delivered (or least, not delivered with any real quality of interactivity). The number of prospects is simply too great, and therefore too expensive to "hand deliver" to each person.

However, in recruiting, there's another-and possibly more relevant-basis for direct marketing: the belief (real or imagined) that none of your prospects can be reached directly by telephone. I've been told by several recruiters that so many prospective candidates and employers filter their phone calls that it's virtually impossible to get through to people to make a real-time presentation. If this is true, then outbound voice mail and e-mail may be the only viable way to reach new prospects.