Generally, there are two types of organisations who use a recruitment company to help with recruiting:
Type A: The Reluctants – these are organisations that have tried to recruit themselves and had no success so they grudgingly turn to a recruitment company to see what they can do
Type B: The Smarties – these are companies that view an external recruitment company as part of their recruitment toolkit and have a long term relationship with them
Let’s assume the Smarties know how to get the best out of their chosen recruitment company partner but the Reluctants need some help … here’s our top five Do’s and Don’ts to achieve this:
- Don’t engage five recruitment companies to work on that hard to fill vacancy as the recruiters working on the vacancy for you won’t be giving it their full and best attention – they will be focussed on vacancies they have with their Smarties clients. In addition, engaging too many recruitment companies only encourages poor practice, particularly when a system of ‘which agency got the resume to the client first’ is the agency who wins the fee if an appointment is made. Often the first agency hasn’t spent the time properly interviewing and qualifying the candidate as they have had to work quickly
- Do be honest with the recruiter as to why the vacancy hasn’t been filled through your own efforts – was there a poor response to advertisements, was there a high number of interview cancellations, were job offers made and rejected, etc. This information will help the recruiter ensure the same mistakes aren’t made twice
- Don’t claim to have a candidate on your own internal database when a recruiter highlights them to you but you didn’t interview them for some reason. Recruitment agencies feel very cheated when this happens and they are unlikely to trust you or want to work with you again in the future – ensure you have exhausted your own candidate pool before instructing an agency to work with you
- Do drill down with the recruitment company about how they are going to go about finding candidates for any vacancy you give them to work on. You are entitled to have an indepth understanding of what the recruiter is going to be doing on your behalf and you need to be confident that they are going to be able to do what they say they are going to do and represent you professionally
- Do choose a recruitment agency that is a specialist in your area – these companies know what good looks like and can provide all sorts of additional useful information about the market in which you operate. A generalist recruitment company will not have this understanding or be able to give you this value add.
If you need recruitment support, contact us for a tailored approach to suit your business and recruitment needs.
Oh goody, we need to recruit (said no one ever)!
