Skip to main content

How do you select your recruitment partners?

With recruitment consultants currently "jostling" for business, deciding which one to use can be a daunting task for HR, says trainer Ross Clennett.

Most hiring managers, he says in a recent newsletter, are "faced with a blanket of white noise that has only minor variations on 'We're a boutique, specialist recruiter with a focus on high quality client and candidate service'", he says.

Clennett says managers who want the services of a high-quality external recruiter should look for one that:

# Is a specialist - "Evidence of delivering great candidates for roles that are similar to your vacancy is an indication that they can access appropriate candidates quickly."


# Asks great questions - "Anyone can take a job brief. A skilled recruiter will ask you probing, relevant and thoughtful questions about the vacancy, your selection criteria and your organisation's operations and culture."


# Respectfully challenges you - "A recruiter who is prepared to professionally question some of your opinions or requirements, with respect to your selection criteria and desired remuneration or skills mix, is most likely to be a recruiter who is prepared, when necessary, to be unpopular in order to deliver the best outcome for all concerned."


# Uses a wide variety of sourcing strategies - "Does this recruiter just 'post-and-pray' on job boards and give their database a perfunctory search, or will they use other sourcing techniques to access candidates that other recruiters cannot?"


# Conducts thorough evidence-based interviews - "A recruiter who uses evidence-based interview techniques can provide facts rather than opinions about how a short-listed candidate's skills, competencies and motivation closely match the key selection criteria for your vacancy."


# Undertakes basic background checks - "Depending upon which research you believe, between 20 and 40 per cent of candidates have resumes that contain one or more significant inaccuracies and/or omissions. Recruiters should be explicit in communicating what background checks have been undertaken on the candidate prior to referring them to you."


# Will be straight with you - "When I was a recruiter, a client once said to me that she always came back to me because I was prepared to tell her when I didn't have the candidate she wanted, rather than try and talk her into interviewing a candidate who was never going to be good enough."


# Is prepared to invest time in building a relationship - "How has the recruiter built their key client relationships in the past? What else of value has the recruiter provided to other clients, beyond candidates? It's not worth investing your time with a recruiter unless they can demonstrate they have done 'the hard yards' in building relationships with other clients."

Clennett recommends that HR and hiring managers discover all of this information by constructing a simple "recruiter interview template".

After gathering all the necessary facts they are better placed to make an informed choice when comparing different recruiters, he says.

He adds: "I would recommend each recruiter be given a chance to be heard on their own merits. Just because they work for a little-known company doesn't mean they aren't any good, and conversely working for a household-name recruiter is no guarantee of quality."

Source: www.hrdaily.com

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

ResumeGrabber Pro - Smarter Screening Software for Recruiters

Recently, CNN.com carried an interesting article about the impact of online resumes. The opening paragraph from the article is as follows: The art of the job search has undergone seismic changes in the digital economy. As broadband coverage pervades in even developing nations, job-hunt sites and online resume listings have multiplied around the globe. Employers are being snowed under in a digital storm of resumes as technology eases the speed of sending CV's and resumes. Source - CNN.com With millions of candidates posting resumes online, finding qualified candidate has remained a daunting job with, or without technology. "Too often" says Lou Adler, President of Adler Group, a training and consulting firm,"excellent candidates slip right under the radar while poor candidates wind up being interviewed and sometimes hired." As the deluge of online resumes grows, the ability to rapidly zero in on the relevant candidates is critical to recruiters and having the ...

4 tips to source candidates on LinkedIn

We have a lot of social networking sites and the most popular among them are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. However, for a recruiter, though they use all of the three and many such social networks, LinkedIn is the most preferred of all social networks. Why? LinkedIn has about 300+ million users. What's more? LinkedIn has about 187,000,000 unique monthly visitors. For every second, two new professionals join LinkedIn. The users are spread across 200+ countries.      Recruiters can access a huge pool of candidates all at one place. The search & advanced search features and LinkedIn Groups further help you to find the right candidates.   So how can recruiters make the most of this popular and potential recruiting platform? Try the following:   Create an impressive company page that will help job seekers to find you. Ensure that you are active on LinkedIn. With respect to posting jobs, spend time to write accurate and descriptive job a...

Resources you can use - BioSpace

 Source: eGrabber Newsletter BioSpace is the leading online community for industry news and careers for life science professionals. For over 23 years, BioSpace has provided quality recruitment and job seeking opportunities for professionals in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. In addition, BioSpace has accelerated communication and discovery among business and scientific leaders in the biopharmaceutical market. BioSpace.com offers a multi-faceted venue for industry professionals to come together on the Web. The online job board, daily biotech news feeds and community features connect recruiters, job seekers, and life science professionals unlike any other industry website. http://www.biospace.com/