The Perfect Match: Working With Recruiters
By Hugh Munro
The relationship between you and your Recruiting Partner is an important asset in your HR toolkit. This article explores how to get the most out of this relationship to ensure that your Recruiter brings you the most highly qualified and career-minded candidates available.
Why clients engage Recruiters…
Hiring an Executive Search firm or Recruiter may seem like an expensive proposition – after all, sometimes employers find candidates on their own through word of mouth, advertising or by posting openings either internally or on their own website. So why hire a professional Recruiter?
Higher Quality Candidates
One of the most compelling reasons to work with a Recruiter is to ensure a higher standard of quality among your candidates. Passive recruiting methods such as word of mouth, advertising and posting merely expose your opportunity to people who are already looking for a job. The majority of these people are either not working, unhappy in their current situation, inexperienced or simply "fishing."
The top performers – the ones you really want to land – aren't looking! Most wouldn't consider changing jobs unless someone they trust plants the idea with them and they're too busy being successful at what they do to be reviewing career ads, job boards and company websites.
Access to Hidden Candidates
Good Recruiters can find people who are otherwise invisible and not surfing the job boards. They use their connections in the marketplace to network to the people you want to meet. A Recruiter's knowledge of the industries they work in, combined with their expert advice on career management, makes them an empathetic go-between.
Better Employment Branding
Recruiters are also experts at branding job opportunities. They know how to market a role, not just present it. They use strategically focused viral marketing techniques as well as word-of-mouth, advertising and detailed Opportunity Profiles to create a "buzz" in the relevant community and launch compelling campaigns that lure people away from their current jobs in order to advance their careers to the next stage.
Better Qualification & Assessment
Another reason to utilize a professional recruiter? Regardless of size or market position, many companies simply don't have the in-house expertise for the management of a hiring process. Without this expertise in place they risk wasting time and money by hiring and training a person who is not a good fit. A good Recruiter is an expert at qualification and assessment, and should have access to quantitative tools to support their recommendations. Client companies are specialists in their area of expertise, and that's what they do well. Recruiters are specialists in hiring, and that's what they do all day, every day.
What makes a good Recruiter?
Industry Expertise
The best Recruiters are active in the industry sectors they serve. They sponsor events, volunteer with industry associations, and attend conferences and seminars in order to both build their brand and develop personal relationships with the best and brightest performers in a sector. These are the networks that a Recruiter activates when they go to work for their clients.
Career Counsel
Candidates rely on Recruiters to provide them with advice, counsel, guidance and perspective. They know that Recruiters have a bird's-eye view of the marketplace and trust them to put their next career move into perspective. They seek advice from experienced Recruiters on next steps, compensation, training and education, resume preparation and even on the reputations of hiring companies. When a trusted Recruiter tells a candidate that a job is a "good move for them", the candidate tends to believe what the Recruiter is saying.
Industry Perspective
Once introduced, Candidates become an active part of a Recruiter's network. This relationship is built on the business of recruiting, so while a Recruiter might be talking to them as a candidate today, tomorrow it could be to generate new leads for your search. When you hire a Recruiter, these "trusted advisor" relationships are put to work for you.
Trusted Advisors
Recruiters can also be of great assistance when it comes to negotiating with your new hire. At this stage the Recruiter's role is to facilitate the closing of the deal while representing the client's best interests. Candidates tend to consider the Recruiter as their advocate during offer negotiations. They will discuss issues with a Recruiter that they won't discuss with representatives of the hiring company. Your Recruiter can also solicit post-interview feedback from candidates that can provide a client with valuable information that can be used to land the individual. Because they've established trust with the candidate, your Recruiter is in the best position to help both parties come to a satisfactory agreement.
Contingent vs. Retained, which is better for you?
Many clients are under the mistaken impression that a contingent relationship is less expensive, less risky and of equal value to a retained relationship. This is most often not the case. A contingent relationship is one where the Recruiter receives no fees in advance and is paid only on successful completion of the search. With no "skin in the game" employers sometimes use contingent searches to test the waters and gage the quality of the current candidate pool. Professional Recruiters prefer to avoid such tire-kicking enterprises.
Contingent
Contingent relationships tend to have a lower priority for a Recruiter. A Recruiter is more likely to allocate their resources to clients who have exclusively retained them and are committed to finding the best possible candidates available. A Recruiter working on a contingent basis is unlikely to do original research to identify and solicit top performers to qualify them against the client's criteria, nor to manage an efficient interview process. Contingent searches tend to result in two waves of candidates – the first sourced from the current in-house candidate pools and the second farmed from online registration depots such as Workopolis. These are the same candidates that every Recruiter in town knows about and they aren't necessarily the ones who are going to make a great addition to your team.
Retained (Formally Engaged)
When you work with a retained Recruiter, you've secured their commitment, their time and their best resources to resolving your hiring need. Are there additional costs or financial risks associated with a retained search? There shouldn't be. Many firms guarantee their results, meaning that you are assured to receive a shortlist of qualified candidates within the time specified. Furthermore, most firms will guarantee the success of the chosen candidate for a period of time agreed upon by both parties. Should the candidate not last through that period, either the search will be reopened and a replacement candidate found at no additional cost to the client or the fee will be applied as a credit against other searches.
Communication between the client and the Recruiters is important…
Once you've engaged a Recruiter, it's important to keep the lines of communication open to allow them to do the best possible job for you. Give your Recruiter access to your internal clients - the Hiring Managers. Let them get to know the work environment so they can accurately describe it to prospective candidates.
Remember that you've hired the Recruiter to manage the search – not to simply fill the role. Don't compete with your Recruiter – for example, if candidates apply directly to you through referrals or general applications – pass them on to your Recruiter so they can be evaluated against others on the shortlist. That way, they'll be assessed against all other prospects using the same standards. Because your Recruiter has been retained to bring you only the best candidates, you'll get them regardless of whether they were sourced by the Recruiter or by other means.
Daily reporting, dialogue and communication between client and Recruiter are very important. Provide feedback to your Recruiter as promptly as possible and in as much detail as you can to ensure that you are on the same page and remain so as the search progresses.
Top-line things to keep in mind about Recruiters:
Recruiters work for you and represent your best interests
Candidates trust recruiters and look to us for counsel
Candidates believe what they hear from us about the hiring company and the opportunity
Retained relationships produce the best candidates at no additional risk or cost.
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As Director of IQ Partners’ Financial Services Practice, Hugh Munro works in partnership with some of the brightest minds in Canadian finance, capital markets and investment banking.
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