While the industry is evolving and changing on a daily basis, there are some core truths about the business of recruiting. Let’s take a look at five of them:

1. Top talent is always hard to find.  One of the mistakes that both recruiters and employers make is believing that a high unemployment rate means that great talent will just fall into their lap.  The truth is that finding top talent is always difficult, in good times and bad.   A matter of fact, some talented employees may be reluctant to leave their jobs during periods of high unemployment. Understanding that, recruiters need to remind employers that if they want to attract high quality job candidates they need to come with an offer they can’t refuse.
2. Sales ability is key to getting business. Whether a recruiter is selling their services to an employer or selling a position to a job candidate, the ability to sell is an invaluable skill in the recruiting business. If you think your sales skills are weak, attend a workshop, read a book and do whatever it takes to hone this important skill set.
3. Referrals will make your life easier.  Every recruiter needs to create and maintain a referral system for reaching quality talent and for getting the most valuable job orders.  It takes a lot less energy to sell a referral than to sell someone who has never heard of you before.
4. Telephone marketing is essential.  This can’t be said enough.  Making sure that you consistently spend time making phone calls to potential clients will increase your revenue stream over time.
5. Keeping business connections alive is critical to long-term sustainable success. Every recruiter should have a system of automatically following up with every connection they make.  Without an effective follow-up system that leverages social networks, email programs and other tech tools, it can be easy to lose touch and by extension lose future business.