How to get the most from your recruitment agency

Aug 30

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Think about it. If you give your vacancy to a number of agencies, they may feel they have little chance of making the placement and may therefore devote little time to it – after all, if they don’t make a placement, they don’t get a fee! If you don’t recognise that this is how they work, you may not get the best result. Here are a couple of handy tips to help you get the result you need (conveniently, they all happen to begin with T!):

1. TALK

There is no substitute for a face-to-face meeting, at your premises if at all possible, so that the recruiter can get a feel for the place. Don’t stop talking – give feedback at every stage of the process. The only way to hone a business relationship is for honest, constructive two-way communication. If you feel the agency hasn’t grasped what you need exactly, pick up the phone and try another way of getting your needs across.

1. TRUST

You may get better results by giving just one agency the vacancy with a time limit. If the agency hasn’t proposed suitable candidates by this time, then give it to your second choice and so on. That first agency should be the one that has the best chance of finding your ideal candidate, so consider its geographical or sectoral specialisms.

1. THRASH OUT (what you really need)

Recruiters are good, but they’re not mind-readers. A new hire is a whole-organisation issue. If the client is big enough to have a HR department, which is producing the job description, the department where the vacancy exists needs to be feeding in essential information about the role. Before the decision is even made to take on a new staff member, senior management needs to have actively decided what type of person will best serve the strategic direction of the organisation.

1. TELL:

Be really thorough when preparing your job description. You wouldn’t expect your doctor to read your mind when you go for a consultation. You'd expect to give some context, some history, to explain why exactly you're there. In the same way, you have to tell your recruitment consultant as much as possible about the 'pain' you're experiencing by not having the right person in a specific role so that he or she can understand what you need.

1. THINK (beyond the tangible)

Just as important: give the agency an insight into your company culture, your ethos. If an agency has nothing but a list of requirements to go on, it can put forward a candidate who appears to match on paper, but the ‘perfect’ new hire may not stay long or may be unproductive if there is a culture clash.At the end of the day, we want you to be happy with the service we offer. In the spirit of two-way communication, we’d love to hear your insights into getting the most of recruitment consultants. Contact us here.