Isobel Rimmer, managing director of Masterclass Recruitment, discusses a new approach to using recruiters.

Recruiting the best people is probably one of the most difficult tasks managers face in their daily work. Whether at new hire, entry level, senior appointments or to the board, we know that success depends on attracting, recruiting and retaining the best talent available.

However, a well-known photocopier company did their sums a few years ago. They calculated that for every ‘wrong hire’, i.e. anyone who left within the first six months, the opportunity cost of hiring them, recruitment fees, or direct costs in training was over £20,000. This didn’t even account for any salary cost. Things needed to change if business is to improve.

In my 20 years in the recruitment business, serving the needs of various private and public organisations, I have seen the best and the worst of approaches.

Many see recruitment as something that costs money and seldom really delivers tangible benefits. Personal experience tells these hiring managers that recruitment involves pushy sales people pitching unsuitable or inappropriate candidates to them.

Conversely, recruiters are essentially told to find a candidate for X job and given few parameters to help focus the search. They will also find that often the same remit has been given to half a dozen different agencies, posted on a few jobsites, and circulated internally without much thought to process or approach. This is hardly a basis for a successful outcome.

Just one question

The facets of the new recruitment paradigm are based on opportunity cost –that is simply to ask one question: “How valuable is my time?”

To put it another way, you could ask yourself:

“How much do I charge out my professional time to clients, and how much of that time am I losing to hiring hassles?”

“How much money do I lose due to lost time from having to refocus my business efforts to recruiting staff instead of sales or delivering products and services to customers?”

“Do I have time in the day for vital activities like doing background checks, following up with references, authenticating academic or professional qualifications, initiating aptitude and personality testing, and conducting interviews for short-lists?”

“What’s it worth to me to have someone alleviate hiring headaches?”

No one can really afford not to involve a recruitment partner at some point in their hiring or appointments process. The key is to build partnerships with the right ones, get more from your recruiters and use them in the right way to save time and money and deliver the best results for you.

Here are some guidelines to help busy hiring managers get it right:

• Use the 3 Cs – be ‘candid’, ‘comprehensive’ and ‘concise’ in describing the qualities of the successful candidate you want to appoint to a position.
• Be realistic with your expectations and be honest with the recruitment consultant; give them the tools to succeed. This will ensure that you only see quality candidates that are worth your while instead of needlessly interviewing several people, only to find that of the people you met, no one is an appropriate candidate.
• Shift the burden – give your recruitment consultant a concise brief and a realistic timescale in which to fulfil it. Do this by considering the role the candidate must play and by what date you absolutely need them in your employment fully functioning. Work backwards on a calendar from there with the consultancy.
• Direct the recruiter to put forth the three best candidates they can find who best meet the brief. Let them do the ‘leg work’ for which they are best suited and have dedicated teams and resources to manage.
• Play it straight – only use your recruiter to find candidates for a bona fide post.
• Do not use your recruiter for an ‘open brief’ or to benchmark against a favoured internal candidate to prove their suitability. They will quickly detect what you are up to and will not want to work with you in future. It compromises their relationships with their candidates and other clientele.
• Reach higher. Many corporate decision makers think of recruitment consultancies as being able to only provide candidates only up to a certain level, from PAs to sales managers.
• Invest your time. Work on the principle of a win-win relationship; a recruitment partner can actively search for people who would fit your organisation, well before you even authorise a hiring sign off.
• They can, and should, be your ambassador: singing the virtues of working for you and looking for talented people at all times.

The result? Every person you interview should leave your premises wanting to work for you and you should want to hire a very high proportion of those people. A win-win result.

If you build the right relationships with the right recruitment partners and they understand your corporate mission and long-term business goals, they are perfectly poised to help you develop a brief and screen for any number of senior posts – including board member appointments.

Today, organisations of any size – even in the public sector – should look upon recruitment consultancies as an extension of themselves. Recruitments consultants are partners or a resource that saves time and money. One should not look at them as a line item on a budget sheet that takes money from one column or another. These experienced professionals can be valuable assets, if you do leverage their expertise the right way.