3 Recruiting Tips to Be Thankful For

December 2, 2013

The holiday season has finally begun, and with it we find ourselves with time to think about the things that we are thankful for. Given the holiday spirit, I have decided to share some of the recruiting tips that I have been thankful for over this past year.

1) Persistence

I learned early in my career that persistence is key. Maybe your top prospects didn’t get your last message; maybe they thought it was a mass email. Keep trying until you get a response, positive or negative.

This year I implemented a 3-strike rule that I use with my sourcing. There were times when the third email would receive an interested response. The lesson here is to not give up!

2) Model Days

I learned this year how valuable a model day can be. Planning out how your time will be spent, and sticking to it the best you can, increases productivity astronomically. I did this by putting my sourcing hours in my calendar and really using that chunk of time for what I intended. I also did the best I could to schedule phone screens in blocks. This way, I would do three to four in a row, taking up two hours of my time. Personally, this is far more advantageous than three to four separate 30 minute calls throughout the day.

3) Be Aggressive

Sometimes working with hiring managers can be tough. Technically, they are your clients. Unfortunately, they have trouble committing to the process that you have put in place to make their lives easier. This results in lost candidates and a delayed search. One thing we have been working on at OpenView, (with the blessing of our management,) is being more aggressive and drawing the line in the sand. If a hiring manager is consistently missing update calls and not responded with feedback, we will stop the search until they can commit more time.

The hope is that these hiring managers learn something from us as and become a better, more efficient hiring manager.

Looking Towards the Future

The Talent Team at OpenView has a lot to be thankful for. We work with a terrific group of people and have some great companies to work with. We grew a lot this year and I’m excited to see what 2014 has to bring!

What are you thankful for this year? Let me know in the comments section below!

Senior Talent Manager, Engineering

<strong>Meghan Maher</strong> is Senior Talent Manager, Engineering, actively recruiting top talent for OpenView and its Portfolio Companies. Her tech background has helped OpenView hire for nearly 20 IT and engineering positions. Meghan began her career at AVID Technical Resources, where she was a Technical Recruiter for two years.