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How to effectively pitch clients to employers
Editorial by Christian Saint Cyr
National Director / Canadian Job Development Network
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This is 'Week 2' of our six-week series on developing the very best practices in employer engagement. Throughout July, we'll be discussing, strategies for connecting with employers; best representing clients and students; utilizing discovery to learn more about local employers; the value of leadership in the business community; turning a 'no' today into a 'yes' tomorrow; and how the job development community can work together to increase employer engagement across the board.
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In this second week, we talk about how to make the very best arguments on your client’s behalf while building lasting relationships with local employers.
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Framing Your Clients
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What do you do? If you met someone at a party or outside of the career development sector and you told them you are a Job Developer; or a Co-op Coordinator; or an Employer Engagement Specialist, and they replied, “oh, that’s interesting – what do you do?” – how would you reply?
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Take a moment to think about it. In your brain, do you say something like, “I work with people who have disabilities and help them find work placements?” If you don’t exclusively work with this population would you substitute the word ‘disabilities’ with ‘immigrants’, ‘youth’, ‘women’, ‘mature workers’, ‘Indigenous Canadians’ or maybe ‘survivors of violence’?
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You may not work with any particular population, but would you say something like: “I work with people with employment challenges in helping them find a sustainable job.”
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I’ve said this before, you never want to market your client based their challenges and you should never expect an employer to hire your client because it’s the ‘right thing to do’. Nevertheless, not only do we not want to say this to an employer, we need to get out of the habit of thinking this way.
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Your funding may exist because a certain population needs support in finding work and your organization may exist to support certain groups, but your job is to advocate for your clients.
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We can’t do this to the exclusion of employer relationships, because that will hurt the prospects of future clients, but beyond that you need to see your clients as extremely capable with, as Liam Neeson would say, “a unique set of skills,” and you are there to make the most of them.
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The very fact that you are advocating for your client will make it clear to an employer that they have some challenges to achieving employment on their own or the challenges they face, but we can’t appeal to an employer’s sense of social responsibility.
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Certainly, your client needs a new employment opportunity and we would like to think employers do things because they are the right thing to do, but both are poor motivators.
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An employer is motivated based on one mindset alone – the future success, stability and longevity of their organization. They are hiring to fill a role. That role might simply be one that needs to be staffed, but likely the employer is looking for other aspects as well. They are looking for someone who is reliable; hard working; who doesn’t complain; who shows up on time; who knows how to use PowerPoint; who smiles whenever they greet a new customer; and who cleans their work station whenever there is downtime.
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There might be a hundred tick-boxes and every employer is looking to fill a different group of those boxes.
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It is rare, if ever, that an employer’s primary concern is hiring someone with a disability, or who’s Indigenous, someone who’s younger or mature, or someone who is new to the country. It’s not to say this employer won’t hire individuals who fall in many of these categories – it’s just not their primary concern.
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For this reason, you never want to say things like: ‘I have an amazing young worker’ or ‘I’ve been working with this person who’s got some physical challenges'. It’s easy to fall into the habit of saying, ‘we have a terrific group of new Canadians we’re working with’.
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All of these statements sound positive but inevitably you’re saying something like, I have this person who’s never worked before BUT…’ or ‘my client grew up on the ‘Keewatin First Nation, but just moved here’. We ended up stating why this challenge, which we just brought, up isn’t really a challenge.
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I realize why we so easily do this. When we get to meet our clients and hear their story, we’re moved by it and we want employers to be similarly moved by it.
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More than likely, if this employer hires your client and learns more about them they will also be moved by their story, but it’s just a distraction when you are pitching a client.
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In my experience, an employer wants to hire an amazing employee and if they happen to have a disability, or they’re new to the country or this is their first new job in 20 years, all the better.
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This is why we do discovery. Once you learn the challenges an employer faces, how many of those tick boxes your client meets, we can speak to those strengths. So instead, of saying ‘I have a client who’s brand new to the country’, you can say, ‘I have a client who speaks three different languages that are spoken by many of your customers.’
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You might even say something that has nothing to do with your client being an immigrant like, ‘I have a client who just completed First Aid, is completely proficient in Microsoft Office and has never missed a day of work in 10 years'. There’s a whole lot of tick-boxes there.
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When you’re reaching out to employers for the first time, you’re not likely to have rich transformational conversations. Instead, it’s likely you’ll be trying to overcome their resistance to even talking with you and this is what salespeople call ‘prospecting’.
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Last week, I spoke about Jeb Blount’s brilliant book: ‘Fanatical Prospecting’ and if you want to become better at prospecting local employers to hire your clients, there are tonnes of applicable insights.
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According to Blount, there are four core prospective objectives which include to: set an appointment; gather information and qualify; close a sale; and build familiarity.
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In job development, these objectives might look like:
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Set an Appointment: Find a time to meet in person or speak on the phone to discuss how your services might assist the employer.
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Gather Information: The first phase of discovery, you want to learn more about this employer, the roles they recruit for and the challenges they face.
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Closes a Sale: The employer might be hiring right now and you can suggest potential candidates.
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Build Familiarity: Here is our opportunity to let the employer know you are a resource in the community and they can turn to you whenever they are recruiting.
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ABC: Attunement, Buoyancy and Clarity
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In the 1992 movie Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin plays Blake, a high performing salesman whose job is to motivate a group of disaffected realtors on how to excel in sales.
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In the movie, the realtors are in a sales contest. According to Blake, “as you all know, first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.”
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It certainly isn’t a strong endorsement of pursuing a career in sales.
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Blake also tells the realtors about the ABCs of sales. It’s ‘Always be Closing!’
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It’s this attitude that makes us so resistant to salespeople. This expectation that we don’t want customers to express concerns or reluctance, we just need them to sign on the dotted line.
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Author Daniel Pink wrote an amazing book called, ‘To Sell is Human’ where he introduces the ‘new ABCs’ of sales. According to Pink, this new approach includes:
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A — Attunement: the capacity to take another’s perspective to understand their interests, and to see the world from their point of view
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B — Buoyancy: the capacity to stay afloat on what one salesperson calls an ‘ocean of rejection’
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C — Clarity: the capacity to make sense of murky situations, to curate information rather than merely access it, and to move from solving existing problems to finding hidden ones.
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In his book, Pink acknowledges that while historically salespeople were a specific category of workers, today ‘persuasion’ or trying to get others to buy into our ideas is one of the daily tasks of about nine in ten workers.
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This is why we can’t just focus on placement. If we place a client who is not going to work out or if we coerce an employer through guilt and misleading claims, not only are we setting up our client or student for failure, we’re damaging our relationship with employers as well.
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When you are pitching clients, whether in a cold-call, at a networking event or an introductory email, you want to remember two things: (1) what does this employer want or need and (2) how can my client or student excel in meeting this expectation? Adopting this mindset in every client and employer communication, will transform your success in making placements and achieving long-term employment outcomes.
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So, this summer, when you are at a barbecue or visiting neighbours and they ask, “what do you do for work?” you can reply, “I’m a job developer; I help amazing people find jobs.”
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We’ll be discussing how to effectively pitch clients or students at our #MotivatingMondays meeting of the Canadian Job Development Network, Monday June 30th at 8:30am Pacific; 9:30am Mountain; 10:30am Central; 11:30am Eastern; 12:30pm Atlantic and at 1pm in Newfoundland.
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On the morning of Monday June 30th 'Click this Link' to join the session LIVE.
FLASH SALE ENDS FRIDAY
If you haven’t seen it yet – we’ve officially launched registration for the 2025 National Networking Day for Job Developers which will be taking place on ‘September 19th’ and we would love for you to join us in your community to connect with other local job developers and other employer-engagement professionals to discuss ways we can work together to create exponentially more employment and placement opportunities. A rising tide raises all boats. ALSO: We're doing a FLASH SALE for early registrations. Everyone who registers by this FRIDAY JULY 4TH, gets a 50% DISCOUNT on registration. Use PROMO CODE NND50 to take advantage of this discount. Learn more: www.jobdevelopment.org/nnd
We already have 16 communities arranged and we’re adding more. If we don’t have one in your community, maybe your organization would be interested in hosting one. There is no direct cost to hosting a session. Just go to: www.jobdevelopment.org/sponsors
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