How well does your recruiter know your business?

I’ve seen first-hand various models used for recruitment, the main one I’ve observed is an outsourced model to a 3rd party, which lots of companies use. My question here is “How well does your recruiter know your business”? If you use this model then I would expect/want the answer to be, “they know my business exceptionally well and work seamlessly with us as though they were part of the same company”.

However, my experience as the “business” has been quite different and has been a constant cause of frustration.

The recruiter didn’t speak to any of our staff, observe the roles they recruit for or know what our strategy is. They had no idea about our environment, culture or what was important to us beyond what was written on a piece of paper. Not once did they come and visit us or take the time to build a relationship.

So how could they tell candidates what it’s like to work in our business or make sure that values, cultures, skills etc are aligned. The answer is quite simple, they didn’t, they couldn’t have, because they didn’t invest the time to find out. This maybe because it wasn’t important to them or they didn’t see it as a good use of their time but to our business it mattered and the cost of this was huge. The Recruitment & Employment Confederation estimated in a 2017/18 report that a bad hire at mid manager level could end up costing a firm ￡132,000.

We spent a lot of time assessing CV’s and holding interviews, now I often questioned how some people got to the face to face stage as they clearly weren’t right for the role and didn’t really have a clear understanding of the role they had applied for. This resulted in both a poor candidate experience but also wasted time for the business. It was basically a numbers game which is what you can get with some contingency recruitment where the focus is on quantity rather than quality! The UK Recruitment Network in a recent survey quoted less than 20% success rate using a contingency model versus 76.6% for a retained model.

Then if we offered to a candidate it seemed to take an eternity to get them through the required checks (6 weeks). Now I know checks don’t take that long, in some cases they can be done same day and most references are responded to within 1-2 week’s, so I was left thinking I’m just not being prioritised, getting value for money or the delays are with our recruiter as they have numerous engagements and therefore just work to pre-agreed timescales.

This disjoined process can increase the risk of making a bad decision as you’ve only personally had one meeting with the candidate, all the other interactions have been with a third party who didn’t give me any notes, so I would hire someone based on an interview and possibly an assessment.

If you look at the cost of a bad hire; Management time dealing with underperformance, spending more time with underperformers than top performers or those in the middle who with some coaching and development could be your top performers of the future. This can drag on for months and affects not just performance but morale. Then if they leave you hire someone else and so it goes on.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an outsourced model whereby they work with the business as a partnership? Understanding your business, what it’s like to work there, the culture, what’s expected, the logistics, specific values you are looking for. Perhaps a company that will hold several interactions with candidates on your behalf and share their observations and seek personal references to validate their performance and behaviours based on previous experience. Essentially having a vested interest in not just placement but the retention of the people they place.

This could reduce your management time significantly, help you get the right talent to face to face interview, lower time spent dealing with underperformance, reduce attrition, improve morale. The list goes on.

 Its these experiences that have informed me how I want to run our business. Core principles of getting to know your clients from the outset, firstly to understand their business so I can do my job well, representing them fairly and accurately and secondly, so I can start the partnership as I mean to go on. Then you have communication both with the client and candidates, it seems basic but often done poorly and will put off your best candidates if you don’t treat them with respect and honour your commitments.

If you deal with Simplify either as a candidate or a client these are the principles you will observe and I believe will help you find either the right talent or the right company to match your ambition, culture and vision.