Rate your Recruiter
8 questions to ask your recruitment partner to find out if you’re getting bang for your buck - or if you’re being bucked off.
Recruiters can be a great solution to attract new talent for your business, especially when you don’t have the resources, know-how or time to hire directly.
However, all too often, what you think you’re purchasing in relation to service, quality and expertise, in reality, is very different. The result can be expensive, time consuming and, at worst, cause reputational damage to your business through negative candidate experience.
So how can you determine if your agency recruiter is truly worth all those pennies?
Here are 8 questions to ask to help you Rate Your Recruiter:
Who are you rating?
Going behind the scenes in your agency to clarify exactly who is running your recruitment is an important first step. Is it that impressive senior manager who came to pitch for your business, or a newcomer you’ve never met who’s learning the ropes?
Check the company out on GlassDoor.com. What do their previous employees say about them? Quiz them on how they manage the candidate experience. What will each individual candidate experience (even the unsuccessful ones) when engaging with your business through them?
If your recruitment partner is lacking in any area of the journey they take candidates on, it reflects negatively on your brand and can hurt your chances of securing your preferred candidate.
If you’re struggling to find out about them from the outside, get a reference from them personally. Good recruiters will have loads of advocates shouting from the rooftops about them and will be more than happy to share.
Are they experts in your industry?
When you’re looking to engage with a recruiter, make sure they have a field of experience which benefits you. It’s their networks, insights and relationships you’re buying.
Qualify their prior experience in filling a role like the one / many you need filled. Test their knowledge on your industry. Get them to share their views on the market, salary levels.
You’ll soon know if they know their stuff..
Are they asking to be briefed in?
A Recruitment Brief is the most critical step in the hiring process, if your recruiter skips over this or if they’re basing their search purely on a PD - then run very fast in the other direction.
A good brief will include questions such as:
What will this person do day to day?
How will their performance be measured?
How do both of the previous points tie into overall company objectives?
What influencing style will they need to be effective in their role?
How far can you stretch the budget for an absolute superstar?
And, the most important briefing question of all:
WHY would someone want this job?
Without a genuine ‘Why’ they will struggle to make ads compelling for the talent you seek.
So, does your recruiter seek to receive this information from you? And if so, how? Do they insist on a face to face briefing, do they challenge you on potentially unhelpful preconceptions, do they share ideas on how to improve the brief and do they impart market insight and indicate their knowledge?
What advertising channels do they use?
There are loads of great channels available to recruiters these days, well beyond simply Seek or company websites.
Your recruitment agency or individual you enlist to assist with your hire may have their favourite go-to channels, and that’s ok, but have they considered any others at all? Perhaps there are fantastic industry specific channels, such as in Hospitality or Digital Marketing which would be ideal for your ad to be placed in.
Another nasty trick of the recruitment trade is candidate recycling. Recruiters will have a database of people they have been in touch with before, and again, if they are a perfect candidate then that is great news for you! But more often than not they are just trying to fill a quota, which is not helpful for anybody.
So, do you know which channels your recruiter has considered using? Where do they source applicants from? Are they original? Does your recruiter think beyond the mainstream job boards to where ‘your people’ hang out?
Are the shortlists hitting the mark?
Are you wowed by the quality of the candidates in the shortlist they present to you, or do they mostly miss the mark?
It’s important to make the distinction between if it’s their miss or something on your end (ie, have your expectations been off, or did you leave a crucial component out of the brief that you’re realising now is quite important?)
In any case, how a shortlist is presented to you is a real identifier of a great vs not so great recruiter. Do they discuss the shortlist of applicants with you as a thoughtful business partner would? Or do you feel like you're being sold to...?
A great recruiter will have YOUR needs at the core of everything they do and will endeavour, above all else, to present you with a selection of heavy hitters with long term employee success in mind. It is all too commonplace that a shortlist of talent is put forward for a position that ticks a few boxes, simply in order to receive the placement fee - because once the job is done, it’s done.... and besides, they have a sales target to hit!
Do they consider your Employer Brand?
We believe that every single job ad that comes from your company should be a branding exercise.
The stronger your brand shines through, the stronger chance you have in competing with other big name employers that may be recruiting for similar talent to you.
Have you considered how your employer brand is viewed from the outside world, and more importantly, how it is viewed from your ideal candidates? Any recruitment assistance you receive should have a strong focus on building up your employer brand as it increases response rates to job adverts, improves conversion of headhunt approaches to interested applicants and will see an influx of people you want proactively contacting you.
Your recruiter should be paying close attention to tone of voice, ad copy (especially what is included about company culture and overarching goals) and, as touched on above, reach (where do the people you’re trying to attract hang out, what do they care about?)
Do they respect the Employee Experience?
Are you aware of the entire journey that your recruiter is taking your potential employees on?
From application to onboarding, how does that process make a candidate feel and act. Are they putting them off through that experience in any way? Candidate experience is a direct reflection of your brand. If the agency representing your company is not handling it with complete care, it could be hurting your entire reputation.
While it is often the case that many areas of the journey are automated (and rightly so for efficiency reasons!) it is crucial that the human element has not been taken out altogether.
If it all goes pear shaped, how do they recover?
Hiring is not an exact science and even the best recruitment process can only contemplate circumstances changing to a degree.
But a great recruiter will have a plan for a hire that doesn't work out. What does your recruitment partner do when they have to replace the role?
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The answers to the above 8 questions will be the key to unlocking the truth about your recruiters abilities and intentions.
Have these questions in your hot little hands at your next catch up with your existing recruiter, or use them to help you decide on any new agency relationship you’re looking to enter into.