That is the same kind of question like "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" There are great arguments for each side, but in all reality you need both to be successful in today's recruiting world - tools to find and tools to cultivate both applicants/candidates and clients. Cultivating applicants is also known as "applicant tracking". But I prefer the word "Cultivating", because tracking brings to my mind pictures of hunting animals.

For now the staffing software pendulum has definitely swung to the 'Find' side of the argument with a lot of the new recruitment or executive search software we see. Many forces are pushing the pendulum, but the most obvious is use of the internet as the primary source of connectivity to virtually unlimited potential relationships - more than ever via social networks. Web spidering or sourcing programs allow you to search hundreds of websites, generating thousands of resumes in very short time.

The current corporate climate and attitude towards the workforce and workforce staffing also push the pendulum to the 'Find' side. Corporations have become machines with nothing more than a bunch of replaceable parts - people. The more workable parts you have, the more likely you're going to have the one 'in stock' to fill the customer's need. But that doesn't mean that you should ignore the 'Cultivate' side of your business because having lots of parts and nothing to plug them into means you have a 'resume database' warehouse of worthless parts.

So because people are easily plugged and unplugged like parts into the corporate machine, the method of finding the parts becomes less chemistry and judgment and more of a statistical problem of just doing the numbers. Recruiting has always been a numbers game but they are much bigger numbers than they used to be. Whereas you might have had hundreds of resumes in the past, you're now dealing with thousands or tens of thousands of resumes at a time. The 'Find' tools are easy, at least on the candidate side. In today's recruiting environment the firm with well defined procedures and good toolsets for how to run the numbers and do the 'Cultivating' are the ones stepping ahead of the pack.

What do I mean by running numbers? Quite simply, it's making calls, sending emails and making contact with lots of people, repetitively and in a meaningful way. This is the "Cultivating" tool that still has yet to become automated. Don't get me wrong there are lots of tools that let you track and tell you what your numbers are but I have yet to see one that will pick up the phone, make the call and close the deal for you. (If you see THAT on the market let me know!) For perspective, let me break this down into smaller pieces so let's do prospective clients first (because I don't think it is a good idea running around with a bunch of hot applicants looking for clients).

I am going to turn back the clock to 1990 because understanding the evolution of recruiting is key to understanding the process for success today. Twenty years ago, researching for client prospects was much more time consuming but far less competitive. The most success in finding clients came from focusing on a professional niche and then researching the associations and lists that these clients may belong to. Digging, digging and digging into D&B, business yellow pages, chambers of commerce and even buying lists from professional list organizations gave you the starting point. (Buying lists should be a last resort because the quality is usually poor.) In 1990 making the call and gathering more specific information about the potential hiring source was the next step. Getting this information into some kind of data resource that can be retrieved was the third step and then your true process really began. Repetitive and rhythmic contact with prospects was the only way to continually build the relationship until that prospect decided to become an actual client and let you take a shot at filling a position.

Today, the process is essentially the same but the competition is fiercer so these numbers are even more critical because the economies of the world are built on businesses that are far less personal and depend on pluggable people. Tools are out there to help you gather the information but now you're faced with having cultivate many more client prospects -lots and lots of numbers - and making those number count. Your client cultivation procedure has to be an automatic part of your business so that it is consistently generating X number of client prospects every week, every month and every year. This is a key number and here is where many recruiters and recruiting firms fail. They fail because they do not have a consistent method for doing this or, worse yet, they have no methods at all and it is just whatever is hot that day depending on relevant information. That's almost like running your business by the weather - is it raining or is the sun out?

Tools can help you gather information but I can't stress enough the importance of having a plan to communicate to these client prospects on a steady basis. But a plan is no good unless you execute it day in day out, week in week out, month in and month out. If you are not getting to these people on a consistent basis with newsletters, emails and phone calls you are wasting most of the research work you did in the first step. Also if you don't have a definite mix of the types of communication and what triggers a contact you are causing more damage to the resource. Most importantly you must give a lot of thought to the content of your communication. It must be relevant to the client prospect. Sending out a newsletter or email telling the client what a great recruiter or recruiting firm you are has zero value and probably even leans to the negative side of zero.

With applicants I think the research is easier but the cultivation is much harder. Thank goodness for computers, research software, web directories, Google and oh yes Twitter, Facebook, etc. Business demands a faster response and more precise matches to the position. There is just no time for adapting talent to the situation. The person must be working and contributing when he/she turns on the computer and plugs into the corporate machine. Yes we are more of a plug-in society but the difference between an applicant and client is this. In a job that does not work out the client just moves on and the company is not really in any peril. For the applicant moving on is definitely more of a hardship and he/she has much more at risk, so trust still plays a stronger role for a recruiter on the applicant side even though the recruiter must still do the numbers.

Like your process on the client side, your recruiting firm still needs a good running machine that is generating quality applicant prospects on a consistent basis. However today these numbers are generated in such huge quantities (or should be) that screening tools must also play a much more vital role than ever before. Quality of the positions held, accomplishments, verification, background checks and even credit ratings all come into play. Why? We have more numbers today and the person is a plug-in not necessarily a custom built model for the company.

So all kinds of different tools play a vital part in any recruiting business but success really depends more on the recruiter or recruiting firm using the tool with a definite plan and the dedication of consistently applying the procedures to execute the plan. Plan your work and work your plan.