ZipRecruiter vs. Executive Recruiter
Fortify Experts
Building High-Performing Teams through Executive Search, Expert Consulting and Team Performance Coaching.
As the unemployment level continues to drop, many hiring managers will be challenged with newly approved positions they need to hire quickly to ensure their team meets their 2024 goals.
One of the popular job boards that is advertising a lot is ZipRecruiter. They make hiring talent sound easy. Just post a job and candidates come flowing in!
The reality is that yes you will receive candidates - but are they the ones you need to move your business forward?
"It's not who is looking for you, it's who you're looking for."
ZipRecruiter and other job posting services such as Indeed, Monster, Career Builder, and Dice generally attract active job seekers. They work great if you are filling lower-skilled positions such as manufacturing, retail, entry-level to mid-level technology positions, or any skill that has a large pool of talent.
However, if you are looking for an impact player (many would classify this as an "A" player), those people rarely apply to job postings. Most of those people are gainfully employed and happy in their positions. If you consider yourself an "A" player, ask yourself, when was the last time you applied to a job posting? Were you out of work or dissatisfied with your current job?
Impactful people are in high demand and very rarely apply for jobs. Those experts typically have to be hunted down, recruited, and sold on a position before they will even consider it.
Quality, not Quantity.
ZipRecruiter advertises that it posts your job to 100's of job boards and then pushes the posting out to millions of job seekers. How many of those job boards or job seekers do you think have a cybersecurity focus or a focus on your specialty area? Very few.
The upside to posting your job is you will, in fact, get plenty of resumes pouring in. Unfortunately, they will mostly come from every underemployed person who thinks you will promote them to a role well above their skill level. You will then have to sift through each one trying to find anyone worth interviewing.
Critical or Non-Critical.
If you have the luxury of time to fill a position, then posting a position to ZipRecruiter or other job boards may produce some results if the job postings are managed properly.
However, most of our clients come to us when job postings have failed to produce the level of expertise needed to meet the goals of the positions or it is a critically important position and they need to hire an impact player quickly.
Many times clients come to us in dire need to fill the position immediately because they have spent months hoping a superstar would apply to the job posting. Furthermore, they are usually also conducting damage control because the position has been left vacant and is in a critical mode because the void has directly impacted their team and business.
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Working with an executive search firm that already has a queue of established candidates and networks they can tap into, can dramatically speed up the hunt for the right person.
Your Time is Valuable.
Do you have the time to filter through hundreds of unqualified resumes and then qualify and interview candidates in hopes one will boil up to be a reasonable fit? If so, then job postings may work for you.
However, if you are so busy you don't even have time to interview candidates or the expertise in your specific domain to ensure you are qualifying the candidates properly, then you should consider hiring a search firm.
One of the greatest benefits of working with a trusted search firm is they can provide pre-vetted and qualified candidates. Executive recruiters spend hours hunting, networking, and qualifying candidates so you don't have to. They are experts at getting to the bottom line with candidates and ensuring they are worth your time interviewing.
(Side note: If you are working with a search firm that is sending over candidates who are not worthy of interviewing - Fire them! Your time is too valuable!)
In summary, if you have 3 to 6 months to fill the position, if the position has a large pool of candidates across the nation, and if you have the time in your daily routine to sift through resumes, phone screen many candidates for both technical and cultural fit, to also conduct references and background checks, then ZipRecruiter or other job posting services may work for you.
However, if your position is more critical and you are looking for an "A" player or a rare skill set like a security expert, and you are swamped with your own work, then you should look at hiring a trusted search firm that specializes in the specific area of expertise you need to hire.
About?Tim Howard
Tim Howard is the founder of 5 technology firms including Fortify Experts which helps companies create higher-performing teams through People (Executive Search and vCISO/Advisory consulting), Process (NIST-based 3rd party security assessments and Leadership Coaching), and Technology (security simplifying solutions).
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