It occured to me today as I went to review the resume of a really fantastic Director, Strategic Sourcing who had just reached out to me to begin a career search (very confidential he is extremely passive and wants only to engage with ONE really experienced and well connected Recruiter) and to my disbelief I just couldn’t find a way to contact him – BY PHONE. I looked and looked again – I went back to the message which came with the CV and NOTHING – the only way to reach him was through email.

Now don’t get me wrong here. I love email as much as the next person – it’s great to just send off a quick note to someone – client – prospective client – really great candidate or a peer networking contact. And then wait til you hear back…But when you think about it, email isn’t really the most efficient way of getting things done. By the time you email someone and it sits in their email box for several hours and then they get back to you with a progress report or answer to a really simple question and then you are off in a meeting and unavailable for a few hours….and so on and so on – you know how it goes.What I am trying to say is, what could have been moved forward with some immediacy through a quick phone call, ends up being a really protracted process.

But gosh, when you really think about it, email is really so, so impersonal. Let’s face it there is the issue of miscommunication that comes with email. Since you can’t put tone and context into email, it sometimes can cause more harm than good to the relationship. I don’t know about you but I often don’t get or like the tone of some things I get via email. And think about it, it’s really not as an efficient tool to communicate properly as we really think it is.

So this year our Argentus team has decided to do a 360 and get back to real relationship building the right way. We’ve come out from behind our emails and we are back at grass roots basics, good old fashioned talking and guess what, it’s actually working. We are Refreshed to be back to total engagement and everyone is finding it refreshing to talk rather than email. It’s almost like what’s old is NEW AGAIN. – Talking, listening ENGAGEMENT. An absolute essential of what the Recruiting field is all about  – it’s the difference between doing a good job and really WOWING the client (and for us the client is everyone we deal with not just the companies) So expect to engage with Argentus more on the phone this year than through email. We know that improving our efforts to talk more and text less are going to pay off handsomely because that’s how we can connect faster, do our research better, screen and present more effectively and get better results by listening and learning in one on one conversations with everyone we connect with.

So, getting back to my initial point, imagine how very frustrating it is when we reach for the phone to personally engage and ‘we can’t find the number’ to reach you –  I put it to my team that this was pretty silly that I couldn’t find the number on that resume and guess what, this phenomenon is pretty commonplace with quite a few (well more than you would think) of the candidates we deal with in Supply Chain Management and Procurement. The numbers somehow get omitted.

Right – no – WRONG. Alway, always be available to be contacted. Home, office and cell. Be sure to get as many digits on your resume you feel comfortable sharing, because you know, in this fast paced industry of Recruiting, a lot happens in a day or even a few hours and you might just miss something really great.

For everyone else – let’s get talking – we got some pretty neat stuff to tell you about what we’ve been doing and want to hear how we can help you get the most our of your relationship with us. We’re coming to chat with you (da-da-da) – so be kind, speak with us, it really pays off to personally engage. We get to really know you and can help navigate you through the complex world of the Supply Chain Management Recruiting Vertical.

Oh, and don’t get me started on the perils and pilfalls of hiding behind voicemail – that’s a great discussion for another day.

Chat soon

Bronwen