Targeted Recruiting – 100% Response

Here’s a great example of what a company can do when they get serious about recruiting the best of the best. Ben Mattes in Montreal tells the story of what Red 5 Studios did last year:

An Offer You Can’t Refuse

“They all knew that recruiting in their industry was crazy: people are constantly spammed by recruiters, and competition for quality talent is fierce. Still, the three owners were determined to hire the best and brightest minds in the industry, while communicating just how damned cool it is to work at Red 5 Studios.”

Mark [Kern, CEO] remembered that Steve Jobs took a uniquely active role when he started running Pixar. Jobs personally called the top fifty animators in the world, and extended an invitation to come and work for his new company. It’s that kind of rapport that the team most wanted to replicate, but they still needed a way to cut through the hype of traditional recruiting campaigns. So it was decided that instead of recruiting openly, the company would focus on personally meeting one hundred of the top people in the industry.

Mark Kern is talking to you personally telling you why he thinks you would be the perfect fit for his new company, Red 5, and asking you to get in touch to discuss a potential job offer. And he is doing so in a way that has made you feel like the most valuable developer on the planet, worthy of significant investment in terms of time and energy to do nothing more then get your attention.

So, what would you do? Would you contact him back to discuss further, even if you were extremely happy at your current job?

If you answered yes, you aren’t alone. A recruitment campaign like this is undeniably flattering and powerful and is likely to have a near 100% response rate (at least in as far as getting in touch, if not necessarily accepting the position).

Now that’s recruiting! 99 of the 100 targeted developers contacted Red 5 to find out more.

Paul Senzee was one of those. He tells his side on his blog: What it was like to get the Golden Ticket package from Red 5. (PS: The image above is Paul’s.)

UPDATE: MSNBC did a segment on the Golden Ticket project:

(WordPress doesn’t embed MSNBC video, so click the image to go to their page)

Quote: “Our resume shot from 10 per week to 10 times that – and the quality was off the charts.”