A little preparation before you begin your telemarketing campaign is essential, especially when dealing with competition and targeting multiple disciplines. Staying focused and consistent is important, and following a preset targeted script alleviates surprises. Lets get right into the telephone recruiting techniques you can use as an individual recruiter or as a manager running a large medical staffing agency wishing to train its recruiting staff.
Who are you calling?
Each discipline within the medical community has its own quarks and surprises. Knowing who you are calling fundamentally strips away the need to focus on the candidates you really don't need. Are you targeting nurses or are you targeting radiology technicians? Are you focusing on a type of license within a discipline or are you in need of just males or female within the license medical clinician? Do you have shifts already available? Are you looking for new grads or experienced clinicians?
Each call you make must be made with the goal of closing the deal. That is why knowing who you are calling is so important. I found many medical staffing recruiters use the "shot gun approach" to making phone calls. This technique is flawed in so many ways within the goal of finding candidates. Many medical staffing managers set minimum phone call goals to there employees They usually expect there recruiting staff to make a certain numbers of calls a day, make certain number appointments and hire so many candidates. The goal of knowing your audience is to focus on the principal of 20/80 or twenty percent of your efforts should produce 80 of your results. The "shot gun approach" uses the 80/20 or 80% of your efforts produces 20% of your results.
Your first step then in beginning your telephone marketing campaign is to "Know who you are calling". Once you establish this you can then begin to identify the next step in you telephone marketing campaign.
How to best target potential recruits?
The competition is fierce and finding qualified candidates in the sea of hungry fish (your competition) can be daunting and making you feel as if you are spinning your wheels getting knower fast. Perhaps you are new at this industry or you were recently hired as a recruiter for a medical staffing agency, or perhaps you are a new company wishing to find candidates to fill positions or perhaps you are a manager interested in growth and wishing to train your staff. Whatever your position is, finding and securing qualified candidates is second only to finding clients.
We already determined that the first step in the telephone recruiting process is to know who your target audience is. How to best target potential recruits is about learning what each potential candidate wants, needs and how there particular niche works and the language to best elicit a response.
Let me provide an example of an email question sent to me by a medical staffing agency interested in entering a segment within the medical industry.
Question:
": My company wishes to target respiratory therapist, we are already staffing radiology technicians. How should we begin targeting respiratory therapist?"
Answer:
"You definitely know your target audience; this is the fist step in the telephone recruiting techniques. Understand that respiratory therapist usually work on 12 hour shifts. This is quit typical for the industry. When calling respiratory therapist to work for a medical staffing agency two things you must be aware of before calling them. Since they work 12 hour shifts, your maximum usage of time will be done in the late afternoon or early mornings. Second, respiratory therapist know they are in demand and will want to know how much you will pay them, Usually the pay rate is given not in hours but in total day rate pay. The pay rate is based on 12 hour shifts and not 8"
The above question focused on how to best target a segment within the medical industry. Each industry within the medical field has it own needs analysis that must be understood and done in order to get more for your time and money. Doing this second part of the telephone recruiting process will bring value added results to your campaign.
What is my objective for calling?
This should be quit simple and seems to be straight to the point, or is it? Writing down your objective on paper prevents having to come up with a new script each and every time you dial a new number. You only have a few second to capture your audience so making an impact quick and to the point may be the difference between finding a candidate or not.
Is your objective to simply fill one shift? Is your objective to find a candidate for two weeks? Is your objective to fill a bi-weekly shift? Or is your objective to have a pool of qualified clinicians at your disposal? The reason knowing your objective is so important is because it focuses your energy only on candidates that meet those needs. Eliminates the noise associated with the screening process and improves the response rate from those you are calling that meet your objective.
Instead of calling 100 candidates on your list using the "shot-gun approach", you call only 20 potential candidates that have a higher chance to fill the shits. This process eliminates hours and hours of calls that will lead to wasted time and money. Finding the 20 potential candidates is determined by understanding who you are calling and what you objective are when you reach your potential candidates.
Example:
When I owned my own medical staffing agency I needed to fill a shift quickly. It was only one day shift that may lead to additional work. I needed to call a technician that was already working and would be willing to work a day shift, I decided to call a technician working a night shift. The best way to reach the technician was either early in the morning or late at night before he/she started the shift. I pulled out my database and isolated only the technicians I new were working night shifts. My objective was to secure a shift for one day only, yet I knew it would be faced with lots of NO's, unless I figured out how to respond to objections. I decided to offer a pay rate at 85% of my gross to secure the candidate, secure the shift, secure my reputation and hopefully secure more business in the future. It took one phone call a total of ten minutes and I had the shift secured"
I did what I had to do to secure a shift and begin building my reputation, up course I could not continue staffing the shift paying 85% of my gross, but it allowed me to secure the contract and potentially get more business, (I did get the contract afterward). The above example leads me to the next phase in the telephone recruiting technique planning phase.
How to deal with objections?
Mastering this technique will unlock the door to success and growth for your medical staffing agency. Learning to listen and hear what the individual is actually saying is fundamentally an art form. Accepting objections on face value and not pursuing further may drive you to spin your wheels even further.
Typical objections you will hear are?
- I don't work registry
- I am too tired
- I don't like going to new places
Many of these objections can be overcome if you simply prepare yourself for the objections by providing a solution to the objections before you script your call. That is why knowing your target market is so important in the entire telephone recruiting process.
In the above example, the response to objections typical when calling a technician working late shifts is "I am too tired" I overcame that objection by offering the technician more money than what he could possibly make working two days in his job.
Going to new places prevents many from taking on working for a medical staffing company, but you can simply have a well scripted response to this objection. Typical response may be "This facility will not expect you to do paper work, they simply want you to perform x-ray's and they have a helper who will do all the paperwork".
Focus your script on what the clinician is competent on and find an answer to the typical fears and concerns of the clinician within the particular niche they work in.
Each objection must have a viable solution in order to master the 80/20 principal. Spend time preparing to make your phone calls in order to secure your goal.
If you are finding for a recruitment consultant Singapore job, you will need to obtain the CEI basic exam to be qualified to operate as a license recruitment consultant in Singapore.
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