How to work successfully with recruitment agencies.

The market is tough; we hear that every day from our teams. With the statistics showing an ongoing decline in candidate availability, combined with the lowest unemployment rate since mid 1970's not to mention the political landscape - recruiters jobs are tricky to say the least! So begs the question - how to get the best from your recruitment partnerships in this market place? A good recruitment company comes into its own in the current market, but to produce the required candidate we do need to be afforded some time.

Some hiring companies appreciate the lean candidate market but respond by dishing out their recruitment to, in some cases, up to ten agencies...in their minds the wider the net.... not the case I'm afraid. All those agencies, if they think about it, realise the client is not giving anything more than 10% of their faith in any one supplier, why should they demand anything more in terms of commitment in return to fill their roles, especially if they are demanding low rates across the board. Any recruiter knows that it makes more sense to put their priorities with the clients that have given at best exclusivity, but at least, working closely with a small number of recruiters to whom they have afforded time to get to know their business, it's culture and challenges. It's quite simple you get out what you put in. A good recruiter should understand you, your opportunities, as well as your business and its challenges, how best to market your roles and who will fit into your culture, guess what - to do that properly that takes some time. Recently we took 2 weeks to produce one CV for a role that a new client was struggling to recruit for, we could tell they were getting a little impatient (they didn't know us well enough at that point) but wanted to assure them we would not waste their time with irrelevant CVs because time is money - for all of us! When we did produce that CV we thought was a match, the interview was arranged for the next morning and the job was offered and accepted by lunchtime.

That's the way to do it - less is more, sometimes anyway! Why not let us show you what we can do - there's nothing to lose and everything to gain!