In this lesson, we’ll take a look at three key factors for network recruiting success. You should be prioritizing these steps from the very beginning of your network recruiting journey. Let’s get started.
Get the core team on board early
The very first step is to get your core team on board. Here are some examples of key people to get on board initially:
- Your company’s founding team: Most likely to have a great network and one that is going to be relevant in your specific industry.
- Recruiting leaders and their team
- Department leaders that are recruiting — for example, if you’re recruiting for a finance role, it’s important to get all key finance decision-makers' network represented in your Network.
- Close advisors and investors: We'll go over how to ask them and bring them onboard.
- Full-time employees and trusted contractors
Reframe your process
Most organizations, by default, recruit in more or less the same ways. A typical process might involve going straight to LinkedIn and online job boards to share ads and postings. However, with network recruiting, you can approach things a little differently (and more efficiently).
As a team member, everyone on the account will be able to:
- Add their connections to your account (initially from LinkedIn)
- Suggest connections as potential candidates for open and future roles
- Recruiters or hiring managers will review these suggestions and extend the search to more of your warmest and closest connections.
As opposed to the inbound or cold outbound process, you may well find that you have more than 20 high-potential candidates to pursue straight away, all with existing connections to people you know! Starting out with this strategy can save you a ton of time, giving you a batch of reliable contacts to reach out to from the very start.
Make sure you vet connections
Once you’ve compiled a list of high-potential connections for a particular role, make sure your connections are vetted before reaching out. You may find out by asking your team members how well they know the connection they've suggested and why they would be a great fit for the role. You won’t necessarily get feedback from every team member — some of them may not know their connections well enough— but you’ll likely end up with a shortlist of warm potential referrals to work with.
This allows you to triage and rank your new connections straight away, giving you a clearer roadmap for contacting them and beginning the recruitment process. We recommend asking the person connected to a contact to initiate the reach-out. Make sure you reach a consensus with your team about how you'll communicate with potential candidates early on.
It’s all about relationships
As you can see, success in the early stages of network recruiting is all about relying on trusted people around you to help you connect with potential candidates, refine your list, and identify the most promising candidates.
This is what lies at the heart of network recruiting — bringing lots of different brains and experiences together to recruit new talent in the most efficient way possible.
