Recruitment is a right drag, isn’t it?!
If you’re an employer with work up to your eyeballs, coupled with an alarming lack of resources, then clearly you need to hire new blood – and fast. Most likely you won’t have the time to engage in the laborious process of sourcing and vetting candidates; you’re in the ludicrous, but all too common position of being so bonkers-busy that you don’t have the time to hire someone to help make you less bonkers-busy. So as specialist recruiters we can take away the pain of sourcing and vetting candidates, but we still need your input to make a successful hire!
In an increasingly tight market, many companies are still missing out on the best candidates and as a consequence, vacancies are staying open for months on end. The impact of this can be far-reaching, having implications not only for team morale and work-life balance, but staff shortages may affect the quality of output; clients may be lost and profits squeezed, the reputation of the business will also be compromised which makes attracting talent even more of a struggle. This rather sorry state of affairs will be familiar to many businesses, large and small, so how can we break the cycle?
First of all, choose a recruiter who you trust, who is well-networked, and who understands your business. (I say ‘a’ recruiter – 1 or 2 should suffice – the more recruiters you use, the less incentivised each one will feel). Less is more when it comes to the number of agencies you brief. However less is definitely not more when it comes to the rates you’re willing to pay. Driving a really hard bargain with your recruiter may, like a KFC bucket, give immediate satisfaction, but ultimately it could leave you feeling rather queasy. If you want your recruiter to be fully engaged, then the arrangement has to palatable for both sides.
Secondly, treat a candidate in the same way you would wish to be treated yourself. Sounds obvious doesn’t it? Yet sadly, even in this market where candidate is King (or Queen!), once that person has expressed their interest, it often takes weeks for clients to respond to a CV – even when it’s a stellar one. Worse still, days and weeks can go by before feedback is given even after a candidate has invested time in preparing for and showing up for interviews.
Most barmy of all, is when employers decide to make an offer, but take aeons to arrange the necessary paperwork. By the time the offer is formalised, the candidate is long-gone, happily ensconced in a brilliant new job with a business that quickly identified their value and acted on it – fast. It’s a bizarre situation when good candidates are being snapped up like billy-oh. You may work somewhere wonderful and special, you may be a fantastic boss with a great job to offer, but unless you’re very lucky, the best people simply will not wait around.
There may be many underlying issues at work here, but clearly the bonkers-busy scenario is a major factor. However, some times more time invested now will save a lot of time (and money) in the long-term.
We as recruiters certainly aren’t perfect and we could, and should, be doing more to help you – the client – to secure new talent as quickly and painlessly as possible. We also struggle to find good people and get their commitment. However, working in partnership with you should ease the situation, if you can trust us to be much more involved at each step of the journey, then the recruitment process needn’t be such a headache.