Vanguard or Reinforcement - When to engage a recruiter
People tell me I’m strange for liking trips to the dentist, maybe it's because I don’t have problems that lead to painful experiences. People here refer to my wife, who unfortunately was not blessed with good teeth, always dreaded visits to the dentist, getting her to go is like pulling teeth, and yes pun intended.
After getting my very reluctant wife to the dentist, I was curious about the psychology of their patients and whether the behaviour exhibited by my dear wife was common. The dentist confirmed my suspicions and it's a vicious cycle with these patients. Patients know it is always best to nip problems in the bud, but because of painful experiences or perceived hardship, patients put it off until the problem gets so unbearable which leads to very painful treatments, and reinforces their avoidance of dentists when the problem is small. This is the exact same scenario I face in my position as a recruitment consultant.
The vast majority of hiring managers and HR professionals I speak with usually try to tackle the problem themselves first and use recruitment consultants as reinforcements. “We will only pay a fee if we cannot do it ourselves.” is the mentality.
Valid point and I would agree if it weren’t for the high cost of a vacancy and the additional cost of hiring delays. Don’t believe me? Think about it this way, if a company pays you $120,000 per year and expects you to produce 5X of value through your work ($600,000), then for every month of vacancy, the organization is saving $10,000 from your salary and losing $50,000 of value for a net loss of $40,000. The calculation is crude, but it demonstrates the point that the cost of vacancy is high and gets progressively higher if delayed. Thus, my advice to hiring managers and HR professionals is to use recruitment consultants as a vanguard rather than reinforcement. I’ve included 4 benefits of early engagement with a recruitment consultant.
- Meeting the right candidates, the first time
Ever felt frustrated about not having "qualified" job applicants, or meeting several rounds of candidates that are farther and farther from your requirements? Hiring managers and HR professionals alike want to hire the right people the first time around. Well, one can always dream but it doesn’t mean it will come true.
I found that organizations can reduce time-to-hire by taking a broad approach to candidate sourcing. By leveraging the existing network of a recruitment consultant, the organization gives itself the best chance of meeting qualified candidates at the beginning of the search and therefore reduces the risk of hiring delays caused by unqualified job applicants.
2. Cost Saving
This is a no-brainer. You have already seen the cost of hiring delay, thus reducing the time-to-hire will ultimately result in cost savings.
Of course, Recruitment consultants aren’t free, but there is no cost to seeing candidates from recruitment consultants, and there is no obligation to move forward if the candidates are not a good fit. In the case that you hire fantastic candidates from a recruitment consultant, the recruitment fee might be a small price to pay in order to prevent a bigger cost down the line. Preventative measures always cost less than post-incident repairs.
3. Reducing Duplicated Effort
By having a recruitment consultant working in tandem with the hiring company, it allows the company to be exposed to two different talent pools and reduce the possibility of duplicated recruitment efforts. Recruitment consultants typically target a pool of passive candidates who are not actively applying for new opportunities and are unlikely to be known to the hiring company. While there are only a finite number of qualified candidates, by accessing different talent pools, the organization can reduce inefficiencies in its recruitment efforts by engaging a recruitment firm early in the search.
If you choose to engage a recruitment consultant as a last resort, share with them a list of people you have already screened out to reduce inefficiencies.
4. Mitigating Adverse Effects
Besides the quantitative costs of a vacancy, there are certain qualitative effects that can indirectly affect the organization. 3 things come to mind, low morale, reduced productivity, dissatisfaction.
Low morale is an obvious one. I’m sure you’ve been in situations where the work of a departed colleague was shifted to someone else or distributed amongst the team. Your boss tells you it's only temporary until they hire a replacement, and somehow after a 6-month period, no replacement was hired, it’s still your work, and might even potentially be permanently part of your work. Now during this period, you worked long hours, you are more stressed and on the verge of burnout. I don’t think anyone will be excited about work in this situation.
Reduced productivity is often a secondary effect that stems from low morale. Although the work is still being done, it might take employees longer to perform the same task due to a lack of proficiency. It could also be that the new job owner is more prone to make errors and ultimately spend more time redoing the work.
If it becomes a chronic issue, you can be sure that employees are not going to remain happy and might be following the footsteps of the departed colleague, and now the vicious cycle begins.
Whether to stop an ongoing vicious cycle or to prevent one, a recruitment consultant will be an important resource and an effective partner to HR’s effort to improve the organization.
So....despite the convincing evidence, my wife still refuses to take an aggressive approach to treat her dental problem Similarly, hiring managers who know all too well of the best approach to addressing hiring problems, but there might be factors at play that restricts them from engaging a recruiter early on in the search process. But hey, I’m just happy you stopped by and read until now! Hope you gained some insight, may we have the pleasure of working together in the future.