Outsourcing to Recruitment Consultants – How to Choose and What to Expect

Do your values and the values of the recruitment agency align? This may seem weird, but the company that you are choosing is most likely going to be the first point of contact for your applicants. You want to make sure that they are going to be able to represent your company the right way. If you share the same values, there is also a good chance that the recruiter is going to be excited by what you are doing and excited to help you achieve your goal of bringing in the team members that you need. Some key traits to look for are:

• Initial interest and enthusiasm shown by your recruiter
• Make sure they ask a lot of questions. This shows that they are ready to dig deeper and put in the effort to find the perfect person
• Are they willing to be in frequent PHONE contact with you? Check ins are essential to make sure they are keeping in line with your values. You may know the feel of your company forwards and backwards, but they are coming in fresh, and some guidance may be needed

The last thing you want is for the first person that your kick-ass unicorn candidate talks to is someone who doesn’t seem very interested in your company and isn’t getting the candidate excited by who they are going to be working for.

What kind of budget do you have for finding this person? Most recruitment agencies will charge you a fee based on a percentage of the annual salary for the position that you are looking to fill. Meaning that if you are filling a management position with an annual salary of $90k, the fee you could be paying is anywhere from $18,000 – 27,000. That can be hard to justify depending on what your cash flow situation is like. What you could look for is a consultant who charges a flat fee no matter the level of the position. Making it more cost effective and easier on the spending account.

Consider the industry that you are working in. Are you a niche industry and niche culture making  positions hard to fill. Or do you have fairly generic positions and a culture that most people would fit into? There are recruitment consultants out there that specialize in certain industries, this is definitely an important thing to consider when you are doing your research. There are some experts in tech who are really going to understand the requirements and past experience that you need in an iOS developer for example. Industry knowledge may also mean that they have a good network of people that they would be able to recommend over to you. Industry knowledge is a key thing that could make or break a hiring process.

Ask how your job is getting out on the market. It’s good to find out how the recruitment consultant plans on posting your position. Do they have a standard list of job boards that they just post and leave up there? Or are they reviewing numbers weekly and changing the posting strategy to make sure that you are getting high quality candidates. Just because you are getting a high volume of candidates doesn’t mean that they are all high quality candidates. Our main points of job posting sites include:

• Indeed
• Craigslist
• Linkedin
• Glassdoor
• Women in Tech

There are a plethora of other options to choose from, so some trial and error may be in order here. If you’re from a smaller town, Craigslist might not be getting you the most traffic. Or if you use Glassdoor, you need to make sure past employees or people you have worked in partnership with leave good, honest reviews of what it’s like working there. Otherwise, the person submitting the application doesn’t have enough information to go on in their decision process.

At the end of the day you should be making a decision on a consultant based on what best suits your needs and your company. You should be able to trust your recruitment consultant to get in the candidates that you are looking for to make your team kick-ass.