COLD CALLING – IS IT A MYTHICAL IMPOSSIBILITY OR AN OPPORTUNITY SCOPE

The present employment environment is competitive. Many job seekers wait for jobs to be advertised. In reality, only those jobs that are required to attract a large pool of candidates are often advertised. Networks and candidate databases have often enabled companies to attain the required set of candidates without having to incur the advertising costs. Databases and networks, however, may be irrelevant, limiting or obsolete. Employers' silent wish is to have an updated and relevant pool of applicants. Any one could be in such a list.

Why not cold call?

Cold calling works, especially if the cold caller uses such communication methods that entice the respondent. Cold calling is very effective at managerial levels and for highly technical positions. The right people to call are departmental heads who may appreciate ones competencies without necessarily being defensive at the possible status quo. Human Resources Managers are indeed resource managers. Most HR Managers are certain of whether an opportunity exists on not – but not whether the mix of the competencies that the caller has may be of interest to the client department. They never share caller profiles with client department heads. Cold calls to HR Managers normally end with the following phrase.

"Thanks for your interest in working with us. Currently, we do not have any openings in line with the qualifications but we will. Keep looking at the papers incase we may advertise an opportunity."

With this kind of closing remark, you have no indication of how your skills match with the typical positions; you do not have a chance for a more technical person commenting on your profile. They are right that there are no vacancies at the moment. What they are not aware of is whether the technical manager for your prospect department may most likely want to use certain aspects of your qualifications to develop a new service delivery concept or improve performance. It is a business as usual standard response. It is not an HR profession attribute but a cultural tendency and this appreciation, by no means, undermines the profession.

Effective cold calls require that the cold caller;

§         Has an internal knowledge of the target employer

§         Develops and structured appreciation of their target roles and its scope of improvement

§         Attains some leverage in the relationship between the profile and target role; the reference person and the cold call recipient

§         Have a defined career plan

§         Has indicative performance attributes that can be transferred to key targets

§         Demonstrates scope for improvement

§         Does no undermine the current status of role

§         Does not allude to the knowledge of any possible internal politics.

May we refer to the above guidelines as we look at a sample of cold calls in the next three weeks?

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CAREERPITCH - RESULT FOCUSED RESUMES AND COVER LETTERS