David Hanley: How I recruit for 10 roles at a time
David owns and operates a recruiting agency called DRH Search. He has been operating his one-man shop for over four years. Previously he was a recruiter in a few different agencies working in multiple verticals.
Every agency recruiter or headhunter I know wants to work on multiple roles, but the more positions you’re trying to fill, the more organized you have to be. Here’s my high-level approach to sourcing multiple roles for multiple clients, specifically as a recruiter who works strictly on contingency.
I source by creating and running searches (via LinkedIn, GitHub, Twitter, Reddit, Discord, my database, and other resources depending on the role) and reaching out to candidates via LinkedIn, email, and phone. I usually spend 60-70% of my time each week sourcing, and the remaining time talking to candidates, submitting candidates, talking to clients, facilitating interviews, and reaching out to prospective clients.
My process starts over the weekend, where I use an hour or two, typically Sunday morning or evening, to map out my entire upcoming week. I schedule my workdays into 15-minute blocks, as I discovered my attention to one task or one specific search sometimes wanes a bit after that amount of time. I’ll typically use 6-8 blocks (1.5 -2 hours) in a row for sourcing, multiple times throughout each day. In between, I’ll schedule calls, both for candidates and clients, as well as for business development.
If I’m working on 10 roles, for example, I’ll create a priority list. It’s a crude formula, but clients who are moving quickly and/or have shorter interview processes will be at the top of the list, along with clients who are hiring multiple people for a role, in addition to some other factors like if the role is for a direct client, on a crowdsourced platform, or a split from another recruiter. I’ll then fill out my 15-minute blocks in the order of this list, ensuring each role gets at least some attention almost every day. I’ll try to schedule similar, or crossover searches one after the other, since the search criteria I’ll use will often be the same for multiple roles.
I’ll work through roles from 1 to 10, and then start back at 1 and start the cycle again. Scheduling everything out in advance keeps me on track, keeps me focused, and keeps my attention balanced on all roles. From an actual sourcing perspective, I’ll always start with a hyper-focused Boolean search, essentially looking for the “most qualified” candidates for that role, at least on paper, and then I’ll back off some criteria and broaden the search as I go.
I also wanted to share recruiter "stack" if you will, all the tools and platforms I use to do my work, in the hopes that it might be helpful for other recruiters:
- RecruiterFlow for ATS and Job Listings
- My daily schedule is done via Excel (I'm old school, although there's a bit of automation to fill in the blocks from the priority list I create)
- Calendly for scheduling meetings and calls
- Hunter.io for finding contact info
Sourcing tools:
- LinkedIn Recruiter: this is my first stop for almost every role, and I've discovered 80% of the candidates I talk to here
- Reddit: this is an underrated resource. It's free, and while you do have to sift through a good amount of fluff, you can find great candidates who aren't on LinkedIn
- Discord: great for web3 candidates
- GitHub: X-ray searches aren't always perfect, but again you can find some great candidates who aren't on (or aren't active on) LinkedIn
- Indeed: I'll use sparingly for certain roles
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