26 Ways To Generate Leads | For Recruitment Agencies and Recruiters

The videos that I make are all about helping recruiters be the best versions of themselves. What I aim to teach is methods, strategies, and blueprints in order for you to automate the lead generation process, double your billings, but decrease the time that you work as well. 

Cold business development is one way to generate leads, but in my experience, it's the slowest and most inefficient way there is. The reason being is because when you're calling somebody on a total cold call, and there's no credibility, no trust, no reputation, that person really doesn't have a compelling reason to speak to you. 

If the people that you're chasing are from things like job adverts, for example, then ultimately you're just calling somebody totally out of the blue, as are other recruiters in your space as well. By the time you call, the chances are that hiring manager is probably extremely fed up of receiving calls from recruiters, and their reflex is going to be to just say no immediately.

What you need to do is get strategic. 

Use calls as part of the sales process but predominantly for conversion. You need to be able to warm your prospects up before you actually give them a call. This way, they're more inclined to want to listen to you. So here are 26 alternative ways that you can generate leads, and all of them are more effective than cold calling.

The first one is content creation. 

If you follow me on LinkedIn, you'll know that I post every single day, and LinkedIn is my main source of lead generation. It has changed the way that I do everything. It's automated my time, it's literally tripled my revenue as well. Last year alone in 2023, I actually reached 3.3 million people just from posting once a day and spending about 15 minutes on that post. And the truth is, I wasn't even perfect with it. There were definitely days that I did forget, but ultimately the consistency was there say 90% of the time. That content creation started compounding my impressions, it started building brand awareness for me and my services, and off the back of that, it's now my pretty much like 90% of my source of lead generation comes from LinkedIn.

Content creation is absolutely critical. Content creation is also very important because at the end of the day, people want to know what you're capable of before committing to investing in you and paying a fee. For content creation, you can strategically do little things such as handle your audience's objections throughout your content, communicate your own value proposition as well, and also showcase all of the amazing knowledge that you have in your head, which yes, it's in your head, but the public and the world doesn't know about that unless you actually post about it. So ultimately, when it comes to content creation, it's just about getting out everything that you are and everything that you stand for and how you can help your audience and packaging that in a way where you're posting it online and you're reaching people at mass scale. This is, I promise you, the most effective way to generate leads.

The second way is personal branding.

A big crossover with content creation, but when you're creating content, you need to have an overarching personal brand as well. You need to know what you stand for, you need to know who your target audience is, you need to know how to create a message which resonates with your audience as well so they actually can understand your content, and you also need to know the pillars that you want to be known for as well. Because if you're posting and building a personal brand and it's a little bit confusing what you stand for, it can actually have the opposite effect where no one wants to work with you because they don't know if you can help, and if you've left those question marks, people won't actually convert.

The third way you can generate leads is email marketing 

Again, another favorite of mine. Some CRMs and ATS's recruitment systems, they will offer a portal where you can send mass emails, you can set up campaigns. 

For example, I know HubSpot does that, and I'm not just talking about like mass sending emails to your database. I'm talking about setting up campaigns and things in the background. It's super, super effective so you can actually nurture talent pools and groups of people ultimately and set them up on an email sequence.

The fourth method is outreach via LinkedIn.

Yes, when you're building a personal brand and you're creating content, your goal is to of course generate inbound leads. 

Now yes, you will generate inbound leads, but you can't just rely solely on who comes to you. That's like, you know, when people just post job adverts and just hope for the best, but they don't do any headhunting. It's pretty much the same thing.

 Like when you're trying to sell your services, even to clients, because you should have a target list of people you know you can help, and you absolutely just have to work with those clients where you're like, "You are a great business, I need to work with you." You need to be doing outreach to these people. You can't just sit on that and expect them to just magically see your post and come to you. So yes, you're putting the word out into the world, but you also need to be reaching out to people to control who sees those posts as well, number one, and number two, having those conversations with people because leads are generated through content, but conversion is created through one-on-one conversations, whether that's in the inbox or if that's via a phone call. 

You need to have both strategies working for you.

The fifth way that you can generate leads is through referrals. 

Again this is one of my favorites. There are so many ways that you can set up referral programs and you can incentivise, you know, previous clients or candidates that you've worked with to recommend their friends or colleagues. However, what I always say is when it comes to referrals, you have to be nurturing people that you've previously worked with, because if you just ask them to do something for you, chances are like they may, but it's not that high of a chance that they're going to just go out their way to do something for you if you just did something for them once and then left them for six months and then you called them asking for a favor.

When it comes to people who you have a good relationship with and you've actually placed into employment or you've worked with continuously, nurture them. It takes 30 seconds to send a LinkedIn message every single month asking how they are, how's things, how's that worker that started nine months ago, you know, all of these conversations keeps you front of mind, sets you apart, and then when you ask for a favor, you ask if there's anyone just like them for them to refer to you. It's a gesture of goodwill at that point as well. So be strategic when you're asking for referrals and don't ask for just favors.

The sixth way that you can generate leads is through affiliate programs. 

This is when you find somebody who works within your niche and then you incentivize them to go out and spread the word. So if we think about Instagram for example, you'll probably all recognize examples of let's say like a teeth whitening toothpaste, like what's that one, Hi Smile I think it's called, where it'll have a lot of influencers, even micro influencers, who are advertising the product and then they'll get like a 10% off discount code, and then if you enter their code you get a discount. So it's like a mutual partnership and it's an affiliation, and then what happens is that person promoting then makes a cut of the commission.

Now, this is quite an advanced technique. You probably do need a bit of a personal brand to do this, but if there's anybody in your space who's not a direct competitor; however, they have the same target audience as you and they've got a big network, ask them if they'd be interested in some kind of affiliation program where you're actually incentivizing them as well.

The seventh way that you can generate leads is partnerships. 

Partnerships, you don't necessarily need to incentivise them with, you know, money or freebies or, you know, discount codes, things like that. However, partnerships is when, again, you find somebody who's got exactly the same target audience as you but not a direct competitor. They're not selling the same thing as you, so they're not recruiting in your space, and you actually buddy up with them and partner with them.

To give you an example, there's actually a couple of agencies that I'm partnered with who specialize in sales recruitment. So when I come across recruiters who want to get out of recruitment and maybe they want to get into sales or tech sales or BDM-type roles, for example, I'll send them over, and we actually split the fee. And vice versa, sometimes they'll have account managers, for example, who want to get into recruitment, and they'll send them to me. We split fees, but we're not recruiting the same thing.

In business, revenue is revenue, and sometimes you can't do everything yourself. 

The eighth way that you can generate leads is through networking events. 

A little bit of a classic, those of you who have been in recruitment for a while will probably roll your eyes a little bit because networking events used to be the biggest thing ever, especially before COVID, and they kind of dropped off, but don't underestimate networking events, especially when people had a little bit of a drink. 

I think it's actually the best place to build authentic relationships, and I'm not just saying that it needs to be specific to work, and you're like quizzing people on a Friday night about work, but just go and build relationships with people within your niche. Half the time, people work with people that they like. That's actually a bit of a secret sales tactic, but they do. And at the end of the day, if you're the person who they like the most, they can relate to the most and understands them the most, why wouldn't they work with you? And half the time, it's actually really hard during, let's say, a cold business development call for you to keep them talking long enough where they open up. So, a networking event is a really great way for you to be able to expand your network in a way that will come back to you at some point. And again, it's a great place to ask for referrals as well.

The ninth way is to host a roundtable event. 

I know that some of my executive search clients, they actually do this. I feel like you could probably do it in any industry. However, I do feel those that are those more senior or professional industries would probably do better with this, but ultimately, host a roundtable event and invite people into your office, into the boardroom, for example. 

Get them speaking, get them chatting with each other, get them discussing the industry, for example, because you, whilst you're putting them together in a group to discuss, you'll also be building credibility as well because you're the person with the network and in the know. And people get a little bit of FOMO, so you kind of want to position it in a way that's like, "I already work with all of these clients, and you're not a client yet. However, look at all these amazing people at the roundtable that we do help, so why couldn't we help you too?" Indirectly, that is a lead generation technique.

The 10th way that you can generate leads is through community groups. 

Now, this is one I talk about so much, and I teach in literally every program that I run, even the personal branding program and the sales training program. I focus on community groups. The reason behind that is because community groups give you immediate access to your target audience. 

When I say community groups, it doesn't really matter where the community groups are held, whether it's Facebook, whether it's LinkedIn, for example. They're probably the main ones. However, as long as you've got a hub ultimately where these people are all located, you're posting value-adding information and advice, you're encouraging communication and networking and engagement in this, and then when you do post a job or you do ask for referrals in this community group that you're automatically going to get people comment back. So something which I did when I very first started in my recruitment career, I built, and I used to recruit in the aviation space. ...and I used to recruit blue-collar workers, so a lot of mechanical fitters, etc.

And I had these community groups, within these community groups, I would get every single individual who had these particular licenses so they could work on these aircraft in the group, and I would ask them to invite all of their friends. And I would say, "This is the place where you can stay up to date for the latest job opportunities. They get filled really quickly, make sure you're checking as soon as there's a notification," and create that bit of urgency around it. And then what I would do is post like advice and tips in this group, and then when I did have work because it was all temp project-based work where they'd fly out all over Europe fixing these aircraft, I would just post in the group, and they would all tag each other, comment on the post. I would fill like 20 jobs in a day doing that. 

When I say 20 jobs, it's like if it's a big piece of work, like if you're fitting out an aircraft, for example, you need groups of people, so I would literally just get referrals that way through community groups.

It's a long-term strategy, and it's a continuous strategy, but if you can absolutely nail your community groups, I promise you'll never have to ask for candidates or clients again because they're all sat there in one place.

The 11th way that you can generate leads is through Facebook groups. 

Facebook groups are a little bit different because these may not be owned by you. So there's so many groups on Facebook which are called, for example, like "Jobs in Australia," "Jobs in Sydney," "Irish around Sydney." 

Any recruiters in Sydney, I'm sure you've heard of that one, but ultimately, other people own these Facebook groups with tens of thousands of members, and you can post things like jobs in there. You can post jobs, and to be honest, all sorts of things to promote yourself in there. I can promote personal branding in there for recruiters as well. So utilize other people's networks for free to get your word out there where there's already an audience.

The 12th way that you can generate leads is to feature on a podcast.

In order for you to get invited onto a podcast, you probably need to start with a bit of personal branding and content marketing to build that credibility and get people interested in your profile and interested in hearing what you have to say because you've already got credibility. 

Featuring on a podcast is awesome because you can actually tap into the host's network immediately, and if they've invited you on their show, that means that their target audience would be interested in hearing what you have to say, of course. 

So again, that's just leads for you. That's eyes on you, but also you get the opportunity to spread your word and your message and what you stand for and the value that you add and the way that you operate, all of those things you don't necessarily always get a chance to do, again, on cold BD calls like good luck getting all of that across on a cold BD call because it's not going to happen.

 But on a podcast, you can, and people will listen if you're engaging. People will listen, and a little bonus is that you can also take micro-pieces of content from that, so there's all sorts of apps where you can upload long-form video, and it chops it up for you into 45-second reels, and then it puts captions and things, so free content for you to post on your page as well, post little snippets, and then direct them to the main podcast and again boost credibility for you.

The 13th way is to actually start your own podcast. 

This is something that I started in January this year, so I'm definitely not a pro yet at podcasting. 

However, what I have noticed is actually it's boosted credibility on top of what I already do with personal branding. I've actually had quite a few messages and inbound leads from people saying, "Hey, I listen to this, you know, I love your approach on this," or asked a question. So for example, I posted one the other day, and a lot of people seem to ask me about market mapping. I was saying, you know, you have to map your market and do highly targeted searches, and people would just like, "But how? How do I do that?" So you start a podcast, also means you can control the narrative. It also means that you're adding more value to your target audience as well, and again, with long-form content, it gives you the opportunity to put out a message into the world that you just wouldn't get the chance to You can get hundreds and hundreds of leads per month just from creating landing pages.

The 15th way that you can generate leads is through LinkedIn Live. 

Now, when I say LinkedIn Lives, you can set these up as an event, and you can invite your audience on LinkedIn to the lives. One of the reasons I love lives on LinkedIn in comparison to any other social media, and I do use other social media platforms, is when you go live on any other platform, you don't invite people to it. 

People just see it at the time and go on, and yes, you can promote it in advance on your stories, but ultimately there's no real way to like get people there manually unless you send them a message on Instagram manually, which is very random. I don't think people do that. However, with LinkedIn Live, you create an event, and you add your entire network to the event, so then they get a notification, they can either accept or decline. 

With LinkedIn Lives, you can actually just get people into that, people that already have seen your content, so they're somewhat warm, or they know who you are at least. Then you can give them a live presentation or talk or a Q&A or you know, whatever that may be, and from there, you can build credibility and give them the opportunity to ask you questions as well. So a really great way to take it to the next level when engaging with your audience and warming them up.

The 16th way is LinkedIn audio. 

There is a way to ultimately do a LinkedIn Live without the camera on, and it's called LinkedIn audio. One of the great things about LinkedIn audio is that you can actually invite guests as well. So let's just say I wanted to partner with somebody in the industry and interview them or do a Q&A with them or get their advice. 

I can actually partner with somebody and do a LinkedIn audio, and again, the same thing where you can invite your audience manually. So it's free marketing for you ultimately because if you've got a thousand connections and you invite those a thousand, even if 20% want to attend, that's 200 people in your audio immediately. 

So again, super easy way, and this is why I love LinkedIn. Keep everything in LinkedIn, keep your audios, your community, your content, your outreach in LinkedIn because when it's all in one place, it's so much easier to move people throughout the funnel.

Now the 17th way is webinars. 

This is definitely a bit of an advanced strategy. I would recommend that you start building your personal brand, you start with content marketing, so the easier things such as texts, polls, and photos. You work your way up to things like videos and case studies and articles, and then as a more advanced level, you start hosting webinars. 

Now, I wouldn't want you to spend 10 hours putting together amazing webinar content if you don't have a personal brand because it's going to be very hard to get people to invest an hour of their time, let's say, in you if they actually don't know what you do. There needs to be some level of trust or credibility there first. Webinars I host through LinkedIn are actually a huge lead generator for me as well. 

What I do is I do presentations. I help them overcome their objections. I teach them little snippets of what they'll get if they work with me, and then at the end, I'll give them a call to action. So if you are somebody with a personal brand on LinkedIn or a really strong network, I would definitely recommend webinars. That's a super great way to get people involved and get people communicating with you as well.

The 18th way to generate leads is to host Q&As.

My recommendation would be to do this virtually. You can just literally set up a Zoom link or a Teams link, for example. I do recommend Zoom because you can get people to register and enter their email address, and remember, I'm all about gathering email addresses because it's so much easier for retargeting. 

But ultimately, host a Q&A. You can do this with your current clients or candidates, and if we're talking about business development in this video, let's just go with the fact that you'd invite clients to this and get them to ask you anything and not just recruitment related and to look like you're trying to sell. They can get together and ask you things like, "What's happening in the industry? What's the trends? What's the salary packages in this particular type of role?" You know, really get them involved, and when you're inviting one contact to your Q&A, extend the invite and say to them, "Please invite your team.  I would love for them to be on the same page." 

And let's just say you've invited, you get 20 contacts, 20 people that you've worked with there, and they all invite one person each. You've just doubled your leads, and you've added so much value, and you've got the opportunity to showcase your knowledge to this group of people, and then you can do follow-ups as well via email after the Q&A. So you can just ask them if they had any further questions. 

You can just, you know, send them a useful value-add, maybe it's an ebook, a salary guide, some kind of white paper, and then that way, you're just adding multiple touchpoints, and the entire time, you're adding value. This is the key to all of these strategies I'm giving you. I don't want you just calling people saying, "Hey, you've put a job advert on Seek. Can I fill that for you?" There's just no value in that type of selling, and that used to work 10 years ago, but it just doesn't...

The 19th way to generate leads is to create landing pages. 

So I actually mentioned MailChimp earlier, which I use for Raire. I love MailChimp as well because even though I've got a website for Raire, with MailChimp, you can set up landing pages, and you can attach lead generation guides. So I've got one at the moment, which I'll leave in the comments. 

I'll leave a link for you to download it, which is about hooking and re-hooking your target audience. So ultimately, what I do is on LinkedIn, I'll say to recruiters like, "If you're not converting or you don't know how to structure your post or you're spending hours writing these amazing posts, but you're not getting any impressions, it's because you don't know how to hook your audience, so download my hooks guide," and literally copy and paste and make it your own, and that's it, you're good to go. And I get hundreds of downloads of this guide, so what that then enables me to do is set up a landing page. 

They fill out a form, they get sent the guide, and then that's a lead for me as well, so I can connect with them on LinkedIn. I can open up a conversation. I can ask how they found the guide. I can send nurturing retargeting emails in the future, set up automatically through MailChimp for a campaign. 

So ultimately, landing pages are a way to get leads into the business. With a landing page, you have to give them something in return, so you can't just say, you know, "Sign up here, enter your email address for nothing." You know, you have to give them something, but landing pages are great. You can get hundreds and hundreds of leads per month just from creating landing pages.

Okay, so the 19th way that you can generate leads is by retargeting campaigns. So I've touched on this a few times throughout this video already, but retargeting campaigns is ultimately when you've got a group of people, so like a group of leads, and you can retarget them in different ways. So an example would be the eBook download that I have. I get the lead, and then I can retarget them in the future, knowing that these people are interested in personal branding because they've downloaded a personal branding guide, and then I send like really targeted campaigns out to them. You can do this across multiple channels. If you're a recruiter who's employed, I'm confident you probably won't use any other social media for recruitment or for trying to win business. You'll probably only use LinkedIn, but if you are a business owner who has other social profiles, you can actually retarget. It's called omnichannel marketing. You can actually retarget across all of these different channels. So for example, you can have a TikTok. If someone watches your TikTok, you can then send them a video on Facebook, and then from Facebook, you can send them to LinkedIn, etc. So you can retarget. The other way to do it as well, and I'll touch on paid ads at the end, but it's actually to retarget people that you know are interested through paid ads. So you know that they've seen it, but we'll touch on that in a moment.

Now the 20th way that you can generate leads is by posting testimonials.

Testimonials are social proof. They ultimately say to your ideal audience, "This is why you should work with me." Your goal is to kind of like give people FOMO that they don't already work with you because if they see their competitor working with you and you've delivered such amazing results, of course, they're going to want to work with you. So testimonials are really important. I know some people do use profiles such as Sourcer, for example, which is great. I think there's a lot of value in Sourcer. There's a lot of statistics around, you know, the increased numbers of job applications if you've got a Sourcer profile attached, etc. So definitely use that. However, I would always say get LinkedIn recommendations as well because don't forget, if you are using LinkedIn as a lead generation tool in every single aspect, so you've got your profile, which is your landing page, your sales page about you, you've got your content, you've got your outreach, you want when people click into your profile to actually see your testimonials as well. If you're moving them off the platform and sending them to Sourcer, they have to manually do that, and nine times out of ten, people won't do that. So remove friction and have the recommendations on your LinkedIn profile as well that way. You'll be able to ensure everything's in one place, and it's crystal clear why someone should work with you because look at these amazing testimonials and look at this amazing content and this sales page and all of this knowledge, you know, all of this stuff is going to really just help you convert your leads through LinkedIn.

The 21st way you can generate leads is through YouTube videos

Again, YouTube is something that I'm fairly new to, to be honest. I'm definitely not a master YouTuber at the moment. However, I do get leads from YouTube. I get people watching my long-form content, and I've explained something like a process, and they'll ask me how to do that, or they'll get a chance to hear a story that I've told about my previous experience and how I overcame challenges, and it just boosts credibility. So YouTube videos are a really great one that people can get to know you and your full story on YouTube. There is YouTube Shorts as well, so if you are somebody who creates videos, you can definitely upload these shorts to your YouTube channel. They work in the same way as like Instagram Reels, for example, and actually, you get much higher views on your shorts than you will your long form, but you can actually upload your shorts in a way where you're giving people a snippet of a longer video and then direct them to the video. So again, it's a good way to get eyes on your posts, but have the opportunity to actually explain what you do as well.

The 22nd way that you can generate leads is through blog posts. 

Now, there's a lot of advantages to blog posts. They're not dead. However, there are a lot of people who will say they're dead. Blog posts are only dead if you don't have SEO-friendly language. If you've got a page on your website for blogs and you've got SEO-friendly language, and you can direct people to your blogs, it's not just about the views on that particular post. You actually rank higher in Google, which in turn drives more traffic to your page, which then, if they think that you can help, will then register through your website if you've got it all set up correctly. So blog posts are actually a lead generation technique. They're not there to just, um, post interesting advice and information. However, they are quite challenging if you don't know how to write copy which is designed to convert, and you don't know SEO. So the reason I'm saying that is because I think blog posts are great, but I think you need to do your research, and don't rely on that as like the primary way to generate leads. Do that when you've already got leads from your shorter form content and then start writing blog posts again to drive that traffic to the longer form content.

The 23rd way you can generate leads is through articles.

When I say articles, I'm talking more specifically about LinkedIn articles at the moment. Again, LinkedIn articles they are good and they do work, but if you don't have an audience and then you're spending two hours a week writing an article that no one's going to see, you won't get the return that you're expecting. So put the groundwork in first with the networking and the content and the personal branding, and then post articles. People will view your articles, and people do enjoy reading them. And again, lots of SEO friendly language is critical so that your article is it's actually crystal clear exactly what you're talking about and who should read the article and who it's for. Something to know on that is that articles, based on the LinkedIn algorithm, they're actually the piece of content which is viewed the least out of every single piece of content. So they have their place, and they are good if you've already got credibility, but again, I probably wouldn't use articles as my main source of lead generation if I was just starting out.

The 24th way you can generate leads is through event sponsoring. 

If you're a larger recruitment agency, you can definitely sponsor events. So to give you an example, I've got a friend who she has a recruitment agency that specializes in insurance recruitment. Her company will then sponsor industry events, and they have like a bit of a stand there. They give a talk there, etc., and they boost credibility for their company, and they actually generate a lot of leads in terms of clients through this event as well. It's also great for taking photos for the social channels or doing little interviews with people and getting little snippets of content or testimonials, for example, because again you're in amongst this industry, and you're boosting credibility. It's one of the most expensive ways that you can generate leads, but it can definitely pay off if done well.

The 25th way you can generate leads is through Google Ads. 

I've touched on copywriting SEO through blog posts and articles, but you can actually run Google Ads so that you appear at the top of the first page on Google. It's a really great way to boost website visits, which should turn into leads, but again, you need to make sure if you're running Google Ads that your SEO is regularly updated as well. This is more a lead generation strategy for companies, and it's definitely a lot to it, so engage with somebody who works in marketing for that. But you can get a great return. I've actually got a client who works in the medical space, and they run Google Ads for attracting doctors into their business, and I think my client said they got something like 200 doctors registered in one month from these Google Ads. So I have no idea how much he spent, but if you think about that, 200 leads of one of the hardest roles to fill, I'll take it because I'm sure he made a bunch of placements off the back of that.

The 26th way you can generate leads without doing cold BD is social media paid ads. 

Now I don't recommend paying for ads without a brand, the reason being is because you're pumping money into paid advertising, people will click into your page, and there's nothing really there that's designed to convert them. So this is when paid ads gets really expensive, so per lead becomes super expensive.

What I suggest is all of these methods that I've mentioned, pick your favorite, let's say 3 to 5, and focus on them. Then when you've kind of assessed which ones are working, which ones are getting the most attention, you've built brand awareness, you've already got a bit of an audience, you've got consistency, your messaging is very crystal clear, pump money into the content that performs the best organically because people can then click into your profile, and you already know number one, that piece of content is doing well, but number two, you've actually got a brand presence and brand awareness at this point. And if you followed all these other formats that I've been saying, so you've posted testimonials, content, personal branding, articles, a few reels, you know, all of this stuff, it is a recipe. It's a combination for conversion.

And look, there's not one way that you need to generate leads. I believe you need a combination of these working for you. You need to set them up, pick which ones you think is going to work within your space, and lock it in your calendar as if it's a BD activity. 

Now I know that may sound like a lot of work. I'm just giving you as many suggestions as possible. 

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