The surprising new trend in recruiting appointments

It’s been a while since I put out a new recruiting post, so you might be curious about why now.

The reason I’m posting this now is because there’s a surprising new trend in how agents prefer to do initial recruiting appointments.

The rise of Zoom due to Covid is well documented. And for a good 18 months or so, it was the primary means of doing recruiting appointments because of safety concerns.

What’s interesting is we’ve seen a major uptick in requests for Zoom appointments instead of in-person appointments even though the safety concerns have eased.

In our discussions with agents, here are the reasons they’ve given for why they prefer Zoom for an initial appointment:

1.)   They can do the appointment from anywhere. They can be mobile, they can be at home, or they can even be on vacation.

2.)   Zoom saves time because they don’t have to drive to your office.

3.)   They can record the Zoom and refer back to the recording as they’re considering making a change.

4.)   The appointment is more confidential than in-person because they don’t risk being seen meeting with you.

Because of those reasons, our clients who use Zoom report show-up rates about 20% to 30% higher than in-person appointments.

Yes, I know you may prefer in-person because it gives you a better feel for the agent and allows you to show physical presentation items, give an office tour, etc.

But, for an initial appointment, you want to make the agent feel as comfortable as possible. If the virtual appointment goes well and you want to meet them, you can always set up a second, in-person appointment.

Drew

P.S. – Zoom is the most common platform for virtual appointments, but you can use Google, Microsoft Teams, etc.

You can also do initial appointments by phone, but it’s more difficult because you can’t use any visuals.