Business Cards Are Dead; Do This Instead
Really, business cards are dead? I’m a Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area HR and Recruitment Leader with over 15 years experience. Every time I start a new job, someone from Business Development, HR, Design, or Operations asks me for my information for my business cards. I’ve always provided it, and they follow up by placing the largest order of business cards.
A few weeks later a beautiful box from Moo or a local printer ends up on my desk with 1,000 little nicely designed pieces of paper with my name and contact info on them. There’s this expectation that because I recruit candidates at career fairs and at marketing events that I must just blaze through business cards. I’ve never resisted the order, because I was a new employee and it never felt like the time to make the point that people’s biases and assumptions weren’t accurate. I was new, and I didn’t want them to think that I wasn’t doing my job by throwing them out into the universe at every opportunity. Plus, just not a worthwhile argument to make. Just order the damn things.
Well, here’s the truth. At University and College career fairs, Recruiters are bringing business cards less and less. Why? To put it very candidly, there are a lot more candidates interested in the jobs at these career fairs than there are jobs that the one company has to offer… and the match rate is around 1% from my experience (maybe 3% at a very successful career fair). Side note, I don’t want to discourage students from going… It’s a numbers game.
If Recruiters handed out business cards to every booth visitor, they would end up managing an excess of email and phone rejections at the resume stage. This is usually something that’s automated in the applicant software or Applicant Tracking System (ATS). It’s that generic templated email rejection that everyone hates. Frankly, the only reason that exists is because the resume or application stage is the first stage of the recruitment funnel and it would be way too costly on a Recruiter’s time to personally reject everyone at this stage.
When other professionals join at career fairs to help Recruiters at the booth, they often either forget their business cards, or prefer not to bring them for this same exact reason. They don’t want to be inundated with emails where they fear they have to respond with a rejection.
Here’s another thing that happens with business cards at career fairs… Once you whip one out to share it to a candidate you are interested in, the candidates waiting in line behind them see this interaction and have expectations for the same experience, even if they aren’t a match for the available jobs. It’s our job to give every visitor the same positive experience when they visit.
Going beyond the career fair, yes, there are some opportunities where business cards are exchanged. I attend networking events and conferences where people exchange them at every interaction. Despite what people think about my career field, I only attend 1-2 major conferences a year because they’re costly to my company… And the success rate for the timing to match the job I currently have open to the networking event I’m attending is rare. I’ve learned this over time, and because of this, my time is better spent sourcing candidates online where I can target better and cater my search to the very specific needs outlined in the job description.
Job openings used to be broader in expectations, but as technology expands and the world mobilizes more and more, jobs require and hiring managers want very specific skill sets. It’s quite similar to dating. People used to marry the farmer next door and now people can meet online from different continents to match specific desired characteristics.
In recruitment, networking events are more for the long-term relationship building and future roles than for connecting for current job openings. Again, I feel like Recruiters don’t openly talk about this because we fear that outsiders to our field won’t understand. This is an evolution and it wasn’t always this way, so, there’s this expectation for recruiters to attend networking events to match candidates to jobs that are currently open. After all, there is a desire to bring the human connection back to a digital world, so something so human as a person finding another person to fit a job… Well, the best way for that can’t be done digitally, right? Actually, yes… It is. I work hard to develop that human connection during my first phone chat with candidates because we do often meet digitally.
People are also having shorter tenures in jobs. The average person works at a company between 2-3 years in the San Francisco Bay Area. Design teams are often rebranding too. I’ve thrown out (or recycled of course) many business cards.
Now that we’ve established that Recruiters don’t use business cards as much as we think, how can we move away from using them completely in those few times they’re needed? These tips don’t extend to just Recruiters. Every career field can use these three tips to move away from using business cards.
The Linkedin App - Add the app to your phone, and ask candidates and professionals you want to connect with for their info on the spot at events. You can also do the reverse method of this and ask candidates if they have Linkedin on their phone and give them your info in the search bar.
Email Drafts - Create a bulk of templated emails waiting in your drafts in your phone before you go to an event. Then, all you need to do is add someone’s email address in and click send! I encourage candidates to do this as well. It’s a good way for them to quickly send a Thank You email to potential employers at career fairs.
Note Taking App - This one is a pretty self-explanatory one. Use a note taking app like Evernote or Google Keep Notes instead of business cards to take down emails, names, and jobs titles.
I’ve thought for a while that business cards were dying. If they were before, the work-from-home nature of the evolving world has surely put the nail in the coffin. Let’s use this opportunity to save 7.2 million trees a year and help our carbon footprint in a very manageable way.
Lastly, for those situations where people are openly exchanging business cards, you can always say that you’re going paper-free. Respectfully take their cards if the situation reads like it would be culturally insensitive. An example would be doing business with a Japanese company as business cards are very respected in the business culture in Japan. Even then, most Japanese professionals understand that there are cultural differences when they do business internationally. Having a paper free mission will be a respectful approach. Don’t be afraid to lean into it.
