{"id":84706,"date":"2025-11-20T17:07:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T22:07:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/?p=84706"},"modified":"2025-12-03T00:03:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T05:03:00","slug":"i-dont-do-personalization-i-do-relevance-echoes-from-trumontreal-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/i-dont-do-personalization-i-do-relevance-echoes-from-trumontreal-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop Personalizing, Start Being Relevant: Proven Recruitment Insights From Montreal Recruiting Event"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>At its best, the Trumontreal unconference, held on October 22, is a laboratory for revisiting preconceived ideas about the recruiting profession. During the discussion titled &#8220;Candidate Approach &#8211; Selling Your Position,&#8221; Laurent Cebarec deconstructed the widespread notion that a recruiter&#8217;s success depends on personalizing their message to candidates. He counters it with the concept of relevance.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the first workshop of the day, participants seemed momentarily bogged down in the question of how many words an optimal LinkedIn candidate follow-up should contain:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Should you include all the job details?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Should you show candidates that you know their background and skills?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Should you highlight the transferable skills they could leverage in their new role? etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>More broadly, the underlying question was how much should you personalize your message or not? To which coach and recruiter Laurent Cebarec responded:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;Personally, I&#8217;m much more focused on influence and manipulation, even neuroscience. I&#8217;m primarily interested in creating a conversation\u2014I want to be able to exchange, so I want to create a connection. I don&#8217;t do personalization, I do relevance. I ask myself why I&#8217;m speaking to my contact.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>In keeping with the spirit of L&#8217;\u00c9cole du recrutement in France, he refuses to refer to his prospects as &#8220;candidates.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;Candidate is not a profession,&#8221; he summarizes. &#8220;You&#8217;re trying to find someone who will fit your job and who will want to work with you and the company. There are no candidates. We&#8217;re in relationships with people.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>To &#8220;create a conversation&#8221; with potential hires, the recruiter looks for possible anchors to pique the curiosity of his target while maintaining engagement throughout an outreach message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the audience, a recruiter echoed the same sentiment:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;For me, we&#8217;re not selling a job description, we&#8217;re not selling a job, we&#8217;re selling a conversation. Come chat with me. So you de-risk the conversation as much as possible. It&#8217;ll take five minutes, and worst case, if you&#8217;re not interested, we&#8217;ll have made a connection.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The participant added that he doesn&#8217;t have time to write 30 &#8220;personalized&#8221; messages to different people every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;I ask myself: what&#8217;s going to excite this person? They don&#8217;t care if I know their entire educational background. What they want to know is whether they can be successful with us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>On the team he leads, the recruiter doesn&#8217;t look at message length. His recruiters simply need to focus on authenticity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2>Cold Calling: A Direct Line to Authenticity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Rather than over-personalizing messages on LinkedIn, an old strategy resurfaced in the discussion: picking up the phone and calling the candidate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t leave messages, I just call people,&#8221; shared one recruiter. &#8220;Honestly, it works really well. In a year, I maybe have one person I apologize to for coming on too strong. Otherwise, people are super receptive and open to discussion.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Another recruiter built on this approach:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;When we talk about authenticity, human contact, building trust, being able to sense if the person is interested in the position, a call makes sense. By talking to the candidate, we&#8217;ll know more quickly if there&#8217;s a fit or not.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The discussion facilitator, Laurent Cebarec, views this strategy favorably:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;Picking up the phone breaks a pattern, it creates a spark.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>During an exchange with a candidate, he also emphasizes the mutual value each party can bring to the conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;When I do a 45-minute interview with a potential candidate, I always reserve 20 minutes at the end to give them feedback; you&#8217;ve given me your time, I&#8217;m going to give you my time too,&#8221; explained coach and recruiter Laurent Cebarec.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>In the audience, a recruiter summarized her approach for starting a conversation with a candidate:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;I often start my call with: I sent you a lot of information, you responded positively to my request. Do you have any questions? What caught your attention? What do you need to know more about to continue the conversation?&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that&#8217;s a remarkably effective way to stay &#8220;relevant&#8221; in a candidate&#8217;s eyes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n<div class=\" content_cards_card content_cards_domain_training-isarta-com\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"content_cards_image\">\n\t\t\t\t<a class=\"content_cards_image_link\" href=\"https:\/\/training.isarta.com\/class\/employer-branding-design-key-steps-towards-a-winning-strategy\/87?utm_source=Isarta_Infos\" target=\"_blank\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img src=\"https:\/\/training.isarta.com\/assets\/images\/ee\/ee0166_Marque-employeur2-_crop_1533x862.jpg\" alt=\"Employer Branding Design: Key Steps Towards a Winning Strategy | Isarta Trainings\">\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t<div class=\"content_cards_title\">\n\t\t<a class=\"content_cards_title_link\" href=\"https:\/\/training.isarta.com\/class\/employer-branding-design-key-steps-towards-a-winning-strategy\/87?utm_source=Isarta_Infos\" target=\"_blank\">\n\t\t\tEmployer Branding Design: Key Steps Towards a Winning Strategy | Isarta Trainings\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t<div class=\"content_cards_description\">\n\t\t<a class=\"content_cards_description_link\" href=\"https:\/\/training.isarta.com\/class\/employer-branding-design-key-steps-towards-a-winning-strategy\/87?utm_source=Isarta_Infos\" target=\"_blank\">\n\t\t\t<p>Dive into the world of employer branding, where HR and marketing intersect, to start building your own.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t<div class=\"content_cards_site_name\">\n\t\t<img src=\"https:\/\/isarta.com\/infos\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/cropped-isarta-nouveau-fond-bleu-carre-32x32.png\" alt=\"training.isarta.com\" class=\"content_cards_favicon\"\/>\t\ttraining.isarta.com\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At its best, the Trumontreal unconference, held on October 22, is a laboratory for revisiting preconceived ideas about the recruiting profession. During the discussion titled &#8220;Candidate Approach &#8211; Selling Your Position,&#8221; Laurent Cebarec deconstructed the widespread notion that a recruiter&#8217;s success depends on personalizing their message to candidates. He counters it with the concept of relevance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":84712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[156],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84706"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84741,"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84706\/revisions\/84741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}