5 Tips For Effective Recruiting Calls

By Francine Fluetsch on November 13, 2015

Whenever my roommate and I are in the mood for pizza, we always argue over who has to be the one to call the place. Why? Because college kids hate phone calls. It’s awkward and honestly not used all that much anymore since texting and Facebook have taken over how we communicate.

image via www.alexandred.com

So if you want to recruit students over the phone, here are a few tips to help you out so they will stay engaged and feel comfortable, and will help you effectively recruit them over the phone.

1)   Be personable.

Phone calls are awkward because they are this in-between zone. When you speak to someone in person, you can vibe off their facial expressions, body language, and can stay actively engaged when they are right in front of you.

A phone call on the other hand can lead someone to be spacing out while you speak, and since your phone call is going to be important, you want to make sure that you have their undivided attention.

Being personable is a great way to do this. Don’t make this go on for too long, but make sure to introduce yourself in a friendly manner, and then ask them about their day. Showing that you actually care about the person you are calling will make a big difference.

2)   Talk about the goods.

Once you have completed step one, you want to cut to the chase in a professional and concise manner. You want to sell your company and the position(s) you are offering, and the sooner you do that, the better. Students are used to getting information quickly thanks to text and email, and if you can give them the information that they want to hear, they will engage more with the phone call.

Talk about the benefits of the job, hours, salary, and cool activities you have like bring your dog to work day (can this please be a thing?). The student is going to be most intrigued by what opportunities the job will offer them, if there is room for advancing, and the money they are going to be making, so if you can hit these points quickly you will be golden.

3)   Get someone in their age group.

What might really help with the call is if you have an employee who is a similar age to the student make the call. They will be able to converse rather well, and since the young employee has just been in the student’s shoes, they will be able to quickly relate to them and give them a rundown of how to apply, what benefits come when, and so on.

A student will feel more comfortable and open with a “peer” figure, and might be more inclined to remain on the call and engage with the employee. This is not to say that older people can’t make the calls, simply that a student will feel more at ease if they think they aren’t speaking to an authoritative figure right off the bat.

image via Pixabay

4)   Do your research beforehand.

Students love being complimented on what they are studying, so if you look up the program they are doing and talk about how their background at the school will be perfect for the job, you will hook them in on a personal level. You’re pretty much doing some of the work for them, and giving them an ego boost, which they might not need but it will always help!

If you know how to play all angles and make it look like you know a lot about what they do and how it will relate to what you think they would be great at, you will be seen as a figure who knows what they are talking about, and the student will feel personally honored that you sought them out specifically for the job.

Make it seem as though they are the only person you wanted to call, even if you just finished calling five other people. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.

5)   Learn from each call.

As with anything, practice makes perfect. Don’t beat yourself up over a bad call, take a deep breath and learn from it so you can do better next time. If you felt like it got awkward, work on your conversational skills or know all the information you want to present by heart so you’ll be able to add your own personal flavor to it and make it sound more personable and natural.

Use different calls to try out various calling techniques and see what works. Hopefully as time goes by you will be able to gauge what methods to use on the student based on the small “get to know you” portion of the beginning of the call. Keep in mind that you are your own worst critic, so even if you thought the call went badly, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it did.

Good luck!

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