Insider's Guide to Choosing Your Recruitment Partner in 2025

Good people are hard to find.? Actually, that’s not completely true.? Yes, good candidates can be hard to find but in today’s world, the hardest part can be convincing them to join you.? The current job market is largely candidate driven, much as we may like to think otherwise.? There is now an endless list of boxes to tick if you want to secure the best candidate for your team and the level you’re recruiting at really doesn’t make that much of a difference.

The various reasons for that have been discussed at length and are well documented elsewhere.? Businesses have to flex and change to keep up with the modern world but regardless of the size of the organisation, recruitment remains a challenging and time-consuming activity.

Many years ago I wrote an Insider’s Guide to help when choosing a recruitment partner and I recently revisited it, thinking I would update it to be more relevant to recruitment today. Surprisingly, or maybe not, all the key principles still apply.? So do the majority of the problems.? You already know that not all Recruiters are created equal.? Many businesses and candidates remain despairing of the industry and are very willing to eloquently express their frustrations at length.? This article isn’t for them.? I can’t change their mind with just a few words. But perhaps my 35+ years in the industry give me some credence when it comes to offering advice to those of you who may well be thinking about recruiting new staff.

Maybe you have a key individual to replace and are uncertain as to where to start? While you may feel predisposed to tackle the task without outside assistance, perhaps thinking that this is the cheaper and possibly easier option, you may also be considering seeking out the advice of recruiting and staffing specialists, particularly if your need is at management level.

So, here’s my Insider’s Guide to Choosing your Recruitment Partner in 2025.

Questions to ask

Here are the questions to ask when assessing recruiting suppliers.

1. What level of positions do you generally work on? Many recruiters will say ‘Yes’ to anything but this isn’t helpful. A company who generally recruits at salaries up to ￡35,000, for instance, will not necessarily have the experience, understanding and network to recruit at a more senior level. For management positions, it’s best to talk to a recruiter who specialises in this level of vacancy and candidate.

2. What type of clients do you represent? Asking the recruiting firm to describe its typical client will help you better understand the firm’s focus. Does it align with your own company’s profile? Always ask a potential firm for client references who can speak about the quality of the firm’s service. A recruiter who works primarily with ‘blue-chip’ corporates, may not be able to relate to the needs of a smaller business, and vice versa.

3. How long have you been in business? You want to select an experienced recruiter or recruiting firm that has a good reputation and has been around long enough to understand your business and know how to access a large network of available and qualified candidates. Individual recruiters should be experienced and knowledgeable with a good understanding of both people and business culture.

4. How can I be confident that you really understand my needs and requirements? A good recruiter should always want to know more than what’s contained in the job spec for the position. They should ask questions that enable them to understand the culture of your company and the dynamics of the team or department that the successful candidate will be joining. They will help you put your needs into perspective and clarify your expectations.

5. Will you visit me in person? This is important. Many recruiting firms do not take the time to visit your company. So much communication is now electronic but a good recruiter will insist on meeting the key decision makers and the line manager for the role to help them understand your priorities, corporate culture and environment. Unless location makes a visit impractical, if they don’t come to visit, don’t work with them.

6. How do you find candidates? The recruiting firm should offer strategies for locating candidates that go beyond job boards and database search. Ask them what methods they use to source candidates. Do they have a pro-active professional network of trusted contacts? Do they use a variety of methods in order to access a broad pool of potential candidates?

7. How do you screen and manage candidates? The screening process should always include more than just collecting resumes. A good recruiter will not submit the details of a candidate without having carried out an in-depth and preferably in-person interview to ensure that they have the required skills and experience for your vacancy as well as the potential to fit well into your team and thrive in your environment. They will also ensure that the candidate is fully briefed about the role and is engaged and enthusiastic about the opportunity. They will keep their candidates fully informed and treat them with care and professionalism.

8. Do you have the expertise to offer support and guidance with regard to role and person specification, team/department structure, company culture and personality fit? A professional recruiting firm should do more than present candidates. They should offer knowledgeable counsel and advice about current industry trends and the employment marketplace and remuneration expectations relevant to your recruitment needs. They will also guide you as to the best ways to both attract, secure and retain top talent.

9. Do you have an in-depth understanding of my field? A good recruiter can recruit any role so long as they have the experience and skill to understand and interpret your requirements. It is not necessarily critical to work with a recruiting firm that has special expertise in your industry. In my experience, some of my very best placements have come when a client has trusted my judgment and opened their mind to candidates who don’t necessarily tick all the boxes.? Recruiters should, however, have a track record of success in conducting searches for similar types and/or levels of positions and know how to gather the information they need from you about the role. They don’t need to understand all the technicalities of that role unless they are operating in a particularly specialist field and have set themselves up as industry experts.

10. Do you have access to the best candidates in my industry? Technology enables any good recruiter to gain access to the best candidates. More importantly, do they have the credibility and communication skills to present your requirement in a way that entices the best candidates to want to make your short-list? Will they pick the phone up and actually talk to candidates or rely solely on electronic comms?

11. If I work with you, what will you expect from me? A good recruiting firm will expect you to be a proactive participant in the recruiting process. You should be prepared to provide open and direct communication every step of the way, including timely feedback about resumes and candidates and prompt notification about any changes in the job description or job parameters. Be transparent about your budget so you can get qualified candidates within your salary range and if your chosen – and trusted - recruitment partner tells you the package needs to be higher in order to attract the calibre of candidate you require, be open to increasing the package or lowering your expectations.

12. How do I know I can trust you? OK, so no recruiter is going to tell you that you can’t trust them! This is the time to trust your instincts. If the recruiter is talking to you in a way that implies integrity, honesty, sincerity and transparency, their testimonials and recommendations back that up and you feel that there is a good connection between you, that’s a great place to start.

13. What’s your time period for placements? Timing will always depend on the time of year, the role and your requirements. Effective recruitment takes time. Ask the recruiting firm for time estimates. If they sound unrealistically quick, they probably are!

14. What is your placement success rate? The length of time a new hire stays in a filled position often reflects the placement success of a firm. Ask what happens if a new recruit doesn’t work out. Some recruiters offer temptingly long guarantee periods but be aware that these are often a marketing ploy rather than indicative of their overall success. Of more relevance is the regularity that the recruiter has to honour these guarantees.

15. What is your exclusivity policy? Some recruiting firms require that you work exclusively with them on any particular vacancy. If you are under a time constraint to fill the position, you may feel that using more firms will widen your pool and speed things up. However, this may not be the case. Be aware that using a number of agencies on a contingency basis means that each company cannot guarantee that they will be successful and their consultants therefore have to work on a large number of assignments at any one time. This effectively dilutes the time and effort that they can put into finding you your perfect candidate. Think about it this way. If you brief several recruitment agencies, all of them have to complete around 70% of the process with no guarantee that you will even interview their candidates, let alone offer the role to one of them. As they are in competition with each other, speed becomes a key driver which in reality leads to corners being cut and the process simply becoming a game of numbers – the more CV’s they send you, the more chance they have of you interviewing at least one of their candidates. Meanwhile you have to wade through dozens of barely-qualified CV’s, trying to sort the wheat from the chaff. It’s not a great way to do business for anyone. Although you may not have worked in this way before, working on an exclusive basis with a recruiter – always assuming it’s the right recruiter – will usually deliver higher quality results and take up less of your time.

16. What is your fee structure? Recruiting firm fees usually vary by the type of position you want to fill. For mid- to lower-level positions, the recruiting firm will usually bill you once a placement is made and charge you a percentage of the hire’s first-year compensation which is invoiced once the successful candidate commences employment. For mid-management and senior-level positions, a recruiting firm will generally charge you a larger percentage of the hire’s first-year compensation and specialist management recruiters will invoice this in three stages – one third on commencement of the assignment, a third on presentation of short-list and the final third once the successful candidate has accepted your offer of employment. This means that they are working with you on a retained and exclusive basis and are therefore more focused on and committed to you and your vacancy. An increasingly popular option is to agree a management fee for the assignment, which means you know exactly how much it will cost you and the final salary offered doesn’t affect that.

17. What is your process for the “offer and acceptance” stage? The recruiting firm should have the knowledge, credibility and ability to negotiate acceptable terms that mutually benefit both candidates and client, in order to secure your chosen candidate. Listen to their advice.

18. What happens next? A good recruiter will be able to give you a clear and concise summary of your requirements together with their initial plan of action to deliver what you need. Whether you ask these questions during an initial conversation or save some until the consultant is sat in front of you is up to you. The key thing to remember is that people ‘buy’ people and your recruitment consultant is your representative out in the job market. If you like and respect your recruiter, then candidates will too and will be more likely to be interested in working with them in relation to your vacancy.

The Recruitment industry comes in for perhaps more than its fair share of criticism, not all of it undeserved, but if you use it well you’ll save yourself a lot of time and frustration. Where you can, start with recruiters who have been recommended to you or with whom you have had a previously positive experience. It’s far from being rocket science but being successful at it is much more complex than you might imagine. As in life, find the right partner and everything is easier.

Copyright 2025. This document is the specific intellectual property of Jo Wynsor of Wynsor Allen Management Services Ltd. Content may not be reused or reproduced without the specific permission of the owner or a reference to the source.