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Building your candidate pool: Tried and true networking strategies

14 Jul 2008

Networking and recruitment go hand-in-hand and in the fast-paced world of pharmaceutical recruitment, keeping up with how well-informed candidates are operating is vital to success.

Traditional online job-hunting is mainly based on potential candidates uploading CVs to job sites and recruiters advertising positions. The benefit for candidates of this approach is that they can broadcast their details to a wide audience and recruiters have a ready pool of contacts.

However, this approach is faceless for all concerned and is fast becoming old-school: in a specialist industry, potential candidates are progressive thinkers and recruiters need to stay at the cutting edge of trends. People who upload their details are often actively seeking jobs and may not have experience, in addition to which CVs are sometimes out-of-date within weeks and are not always updated - perhaps even forgotten about.

In an age where identity theft is at the fore of the public consciousness, some quality candidates may even be wary of sending their personal details out into the ether to be viewed by people they do not know.

But job-hunting has taken a new turn with the advent of social networking websites. Facebook and MySpace are the most well-known, but tech-savvy candidates are exploiting more focused professional networking opportunities, such as LinkedIn.com and PharmWeb.net.

These sites give potential candidates a chance to interact with their peers and potential employers. It is common to find traditional jobs boards side-by-side with discussion forums on a wide range of subjects, with a separate section for frequently asked questions that can inform potential candidates and recruiters alike.

They are also a great resource for recruiters as a first point of contact, through discussion forums, as a supplier of information on a related subject and via directories. Importantly, they improve recruiter credibility and allow for a warmer approach when contact is first made.

By becoming a member of a networking site, potential candidates are choosing to put information in the public domain and the site is an environment in which they feel they can volunteer information.

Importantly, while they may be on the market for a job, they have joined the networking site to do just that – network – and finding a new job would be a secondary bonus for them. There is no pressure on them to impress and are open to discussion. In addition, the likelihood is that they are in a job and are therefore experienced to some degree – good news for a recruiter, who can use a softer approach.

Recruiters need to establish their presence in a network, by advertising in directories and becoming members of Quality Assurance organisations or symposiums such as the Chartered Quality Institute, the Recruitment and Employment Federation or even the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.

This provides an ideal platform to contact potential candidates who do the same, prompting opportunities for a warmer call as a precursor to traditional networking strategies.

Essentially then, the endgame remains the same, but the sophistication of the high calibre of jobseekers and potential candidates in this competitive industry means that recruiters have to raise the bar of their own practice and embrace lateral thinking.