The Misunderstood Recruiter? - Value beyond filling an empty seat

The holiday season is a great time for celebration and reflection. After gaining 10 pounds from ham, turkey, and chocolate (utterly delicious by the way), I finally sat down to reflect on some of my profound findings. One of these findings emerged from an interesting conversation I had with a prospective client where he exclaimed “You can do that too?!”, and he wasn’t referring to juggling while riding a unicycle on a tight-rope. He was surprised to hear how recruiters could create value beyond finding the right candidate to fill a vacancy. 

Now I do admit, finding the right candidate is certainly the biggest value a recruiter can bring to an organization. But have ever considered other values a recruiter can create for your organization? If you already use a recruiter, it might be worth your time to have a chat with them.

A good recruiter will consistently deliver the right candidate, a great recruiter will go beyond and improve your operational efficiency, morale, employer brand, and even succession planning. Sounds far fetched? Let’s examine the details.

Making your organization more competitive in the talent market

If you haven’t realized, there are two global pandemics happening right now. The obvious one that we’ve been dealing with since 2020, and the not so obvious one that had been persisting for the last 20 years. We live in an age where knowledge workers have progressively better offers as companies try to one-up each other in order to remain competitive, whether it’s more vacation time, health and wellness benefits, or work from home options (pretty much the norm now). 

So how does a recruiter help to make you more competitive? Mainly on two fronts. We, recruiters, keep a pulse on the talent market through conversations with candidates and employers. We listen for what other employers are offering and why a candidate picked one offer over another. When we do this on a daily basis we see patterns and trends and it is part of our service to advise employers on what it might take to be competitive in the market.

A wise man told me once if you can’t beat them, play a different game, or make up your own game so you can win. Why compete for candidates with 5 other offers? Sure, they may be very sought after, or they could just be very active in the market. Part of the value of a recruiter is to find talent that has no other offers, not because they are not good, but because they aren’t even looking. Passive candidates change the game because the only options they have is to take your offer (a better opportunity with your company) or stay in their current job (in which they are happily employed). Safe to say that your offer sounds much more competitive in the absence of other offers. 

Shorten time-to-fill

We all know that a vacancy in your team usually means that existing team members must take on extra load, whether that is overtime or putting off other work, it usually leads to lower productivity, burnouts, and low morale. Having an in-depth network of pre-screened candidates(both active and passive), the recruiter could accelerate the hiring process which minimizes the aforementioned consequences. 

Further to the added pressure on existing team members, HR professionals also understand the monetary consequences of a vacancy, especially in a critical position that could affect overall productivity. I agree that HR professionals are paid to handle matters in recruitment, but there is value in leveraging contingent manpower to assist with a search. When you do the math, the cost associated with delayed hire will significantly outweigh the fees of a recruiter.

Improving employee retention

Attracting talent is a hard enough problem already, but in this day and age, employee retention also seems to be a rising problem. Companies are not only having to compete for talent to replenish their workforce but also have to find ways to keep their current employees happy and content. High turnover raises the cost of hiring for an organization, not only because of repeated onboarding and lower productivity but also makes it increasingly difficult to hire top talent because, well, people talk and generally not to sing songs of praise.

There are many ways that companies try to improve retention, but the fundamental reason for poor retention starts with bad hires. Hiring the right candidate with technical proficiency, personal aptitude, and cultural alignment with the organization will ensure the candidate not only can do the job but is personally aligned with the goals of the organization. Recruiters are trained to have in-depth conversations in order to uncover all there is about the candidate. We help ensure that the candidates are joining to stay and not just a bigger paycheque or stepping stone for something better.

Building employer brand

I always felt employer branding is more of a marketing function, but somehow fell on the lap of HR. People are more prone to voice discontent about the hiring process or dissatisfied with their job, and with the aid of social media and another online outlet, it can get blown out of proportion. This skews the image can be detrimental to an organization’s ability to attract top talent. Imagine how talent acquisition or recruiter calls a candidate with a great opportunity only to hear the candidate say “I’ll pass because I heard your company is a s**t show and a revolving door.” Yikes! Talk about a slap in the face, 

Although not to that degree, organizations typically do encounter employer branding problems to some extent. Even if we don’t look like it, an external recruiter can help improve your employer branding, and at no extra cost! Recruiters are trained to identify the underlying factors that motivate candidates to make a move, this critical information is what allows recruiters to portray the employer as a desirable company, now think about repeating this with hundreds of candidates over the years, and the end result is a very sought-after company with a good brand image. By no means I’m saying a recruiter can single-handedly change the brand image of an employer, but we can play a big part in marketing the brand of an employer.

Mitigating skill gap

What’s a skill gap? HR professionals are familiar with this term, it's the difference between skills/expertise that an employer needs and wants and the skills/expertise their personnel offers. Strategic HR professionals often use skill gaps to derive initiatives in talent acquisition. In our fast-paced world, having the right expertise at the ready can be the difference between a market pioneer and scrappy #2. HR as a profession is pressured to address skill gaps and deliver top candidates, but the challenge arises when HR or talent acquisition teams have no experience in the identification of top talent and often a blank database of candidates. You might think that HR will eventually gain the expertise and candidate pool and I would agree with you, but how long can the organization afford to wait? 

A recruiter is a suitable solution to address skill gaps. In the short term, a recruiter can leverage their industry experience and tapping into a pre-established network of qualified candidates to effectively address skill gaps within an organization, often buying the organization time to build expertise and candidate pool. A more valuable proposition is to include recruiters in the organization's long-term hiring strategy which allows the recruiter to proactively search for the talent needed for the future and preemptively mitigating skill gaps. 

So there you have it, folks. As recruiters, we don’t share this information because we feel it’s normal to do more for a client than just fill a vacancy. But maybe we should so that clients can really understand how a recruiter can help achieve better outcomes.