Get out of your own way when obtaining a recruiting partner.

It’s a whole new world in the hiring game of late. Since we are well into the “recovery”, hiring activity for all industries is ramping up in a big way. The talent pool is shrinking quickly and it’s starting to become a game of “robbing Peter to pay Paul” to acquire the employees that meet your needs.

Many organizations have turned to professional recruiters and staffing firms to assist with this process. The workload for the in-house recruiting teams is far more than most can handle and be effective. BUT, when you partner with a recruiter or staffing firm get out of the way and let them do what you are paying them to do. Get out of your own way and pay close attention to the following:

• COMMUNICATE – Give your recruiters specific information on the position, compensation, responsibilities of the position, company culture, benefits and why any potential candidate would want to join your team. (In fact if the recruiter is not fully quizzing you on these points you probably have the wrong recruiter.) The more detailed understanding they have the closer to the mark the candidates they submit to you will be. 

• DON’T HESITATE ON FEEDBACK – The “shelf life” of candidates now are very short compared to years ago. When you receive a screened resume from the firm act on it as quickly as possible. The longer you wait the higher the likelihood becomes that the submitted person will get another offer. You may lose the top tier person you need. Those who hesitate are truly lost. 

• GET WHAT YOU ARE PAYING FOR – You employ firms to take some of the workload off of you and look in the parts of the market that you could not even get to. If they have been given good information at the onset, a good firm is searching the market for exactly that person. To get a resume and respond that it looks good but you want to see more to “compare” it to you are unintentionally short circuiting the process. Again, if you keep getting the submissions that are far off the mark, consider your recruiting choices and revisit with them the criteria that you gave them to work with. If the correct criteria have been communicated and they still miss the mark, you have made the wrong choice on your recruiting partner.

These are purely the bare basics of maximizing your efforts to outsource your recruiting but follow these few initial basics and your partnership will definitely be a “win-win”. Become a solution, not the problem in the process.

Crown Services - website

Our weekly radio show.