"No Agencies Please"

Hiring is F**ing Hard

It says those exact words on our Upplft website, because it is. I've been on the Hiring Manager side, scrolling through LinkedIN trying to reach out and target talent whilst also dealing with 50 CV's, 49 of which are nowhere near appropriate.

When you're building a business you go through 5 phases of hiring, though not always distinct:

1?? You ask your mates ??

2?? You ask your network ??

3?? You go fishing ??

4?? You have help ??

5?? Candidates come to you (not everyone gets here) ??

So you post a job on LinkedIN, get 40 applicants, think to yourself "sh*t this is easy, I'm going to find someone by the end of the week". Two weeks later you've had a few 30 minute calls and haven't even sent a candidate to the next phase.

Now look this doesn't happen every time, you might get lucky, but experience tells us otherwise, just ask any recruiter the story they hear from founders and business owners.

And when you're starting out, using a Agency Partner is cost prohibitive, usually as you have no ?? ??. Now I'm not going to go into why you should or shouldn't use an Agency Partner and at what phase or how you can try do it yourself.

But I will say there's 4 major assumptions you're making when you go it alone:

1?? It's going to be cheaper; the average opportunity cost of hiring is c$34K and 42 days to hire someone, with 13% of jobs still open on day 92 ??

2?? The right person will actively apply to your job ad; surely I'm not alone in this NOT being the experience ??

3?? You know how to access passive candidates; have you drunk as much coffee and beer/wine as an Agency Recruiter. How good is your personal network and brand? ?

4?? People actually know/give a sh*t about your business; this is a big one, just because you think you're doing something cool and have a great place to work, doesn't mean people have heard about you??

Now I'm not advocating for using Agencies for every hire, but I'll tell you how we think about it at Upplft .

Talent as an Ecosystem (TaaE)?

Talent is an ecosystem and as a business you need a broad approach to attract the right candidate, there is no silver bullet and they don't fall on your lap.

Hence there are startups everywhere trying to help you find talent using Ai, socials, global databases, remote teams, under represented demographics, the list goes on. Now this is great but "spray and pray" doesn't work either, there still needs to be some strategy involved.

That's where we see hiring as a funnel with many options to access talent, including "sourced talent" with Agency Partners. We allow you to post your role across traditional channels, we bring our own candidates and we allow you to access talent from Agency Partners without even speaking to them.

And yes there is going to be a cost differential, but it's going to be transparent and fair to allow you to make an informed business decision.

Cut the fluff

One of our core values at Upplft is "Cut the fluff" and this can be directly applied to accessing sourced talent. Why shouldn't you be able to see premium candidates without the fluff of negotiating pricing, emails, calls, CV attachments, let us manage the commercials and you just need to login, see your matches and meet!

Truth Hurts ??

Let's get real. Do you know how many companies have activated reached out to me for a role through a Hiring Manager, Talent or HR team in my career?

I can count them on one hand.

Agencies, 100's. There's probably someone writing an InMail to me right now.

Now I might not be exceptional, I may not be what anyone is looking for (which maybe explains the first point). But I personally, am highly unlikely to fill out an application form and would rather work with a trusted partner to find me a company suited to my needs or reach out directly myself.

And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

No más? ??

You might be able to do it alone, you should always post roles to capture active candidates but there's a whole other world of talent out there to access.

Dismissing third-party agencies with a "No Agencies Please" mindset could be a missed opportunity for exceptional talent. You can tap into vast networks and access passive candidates whilst continuing to build organically where it makes sense.

And if you can see them all in one place and choose to engage with sourced talent or not then why wouldn't you?

That's why you need to start "Talent as an Ecosystem" thinking and if it isn't cost prohibitive, that might include agencies.

Want to know how to build your Talent Ecosystem, reach out or visit www.upplft.com