The Urgency of Innovation with Jeremy Cockrell
#9

The Urgency of Innovation with Jeremy Cockrell

In this episode of Recruiters on the Rise, host Colleen Gallagher sits down with Jeremy Cockrell, Director of Talent Acquisition at Torrent Consulting, a Salesforce implementation partner recently acquired by a global consulting firm. Jeremy shares how he built a hiring machine that moves candidates from the first interview to offer in under two weeks and exactly how he got hiring managers on board to make it happen. He gets into the human centric practices his team swears by, including calling every interviewed candidate personally when delivering a rejection, building a 52 week candidate nurture program, and why he draws a hard line against AI bots for screening. Jeremy brings 14+ years of perspective on what separates good recruiters from truly elite ones.
 
Takeaways:
  • Be creative and curious, not just efficient. Tools like LinkedIn Recruiter and AI are useful, but they won't find you quality talent on their own. The best recruiters go off the beaten path to source candidates nobody else is talking to.
  • Get into the ecosystem, not just the inbox. Attend in person events, engage in community spaces like Trailhead, and have conversations with people you're not actively trying to hire. Your referral pipeline will grow as a direct result.
  • Call candidates you're rejecting. If someone gave you their time in the interview process, give them two minutes on the phone. It builds goodwill that pays back in future hires and employer brand more than any email ever will.
  • Speed is a candidate experience issue, not just an ops issue. Time kills deals. If you want to compete for top talent, align your hiring managers and pre-build your interview calendar so there's no lag between rounds.
  • Build relationships with hiring managers before you need anything from them. In your first month in a new role, get 15 minutes with every manager you can. Once they trust you and you deliver, everything else moves faster.
Quote of the Show:
  • "Being creative and curious to find ways to make it happen is imperative. Not one tool is going to obtain quality talent on its own, especially if you're talking quality over quantity, which is what we should always be talking about." - Jeremy Cockrell
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