Top tips on working with a recruiter

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If you haven’t heard, the recruitment market has gone bonkers! There are a lot of businesses recruiting at the minute, but not enough good candidates to fill the roles – which means the competition for staff is fierce.

As a result, more businesses than ever are needing to turn to recruiters to help them, some for the first time.

So, we thought we’d offer our two pennies worth with top tips on working with a recruiter. Let’s get started…

Choose your recruiter wisely

A recruiter should be an extension of your business and your HR function. They represent your business to potential candidates and provide the first impression for future staff. Therefore, it is vital that you can trust a recruiter to represent you in the best way. Why not try meeting with them, to understand what their process is? Ensure you buy into them and, most importantly, that you do trust them. You should feel as though they care as much as you do about getting the right fit for your business.

Don’t work with multiple agencies

Some recruiters wouldn’t want you to know this but we are all fishing from the same pool of candidates. Gone are the days of having people ‘on your books’. The job-hunting world, much like everything else, is web-based (go figure!), so people no longer queue up outside agencies’ doors to exclusively sign up to be on their books.

Therefore, when multiple agencies are advertising one role, candidates are contacted by different recruiters about the same job, which appears messy and unprofessional. It creates a race to send candidates across first, meaning agencies are incentivised to be less thorough in their vetting process.

In addition – and this one’s the biggy – recruiters won’t prioritise your job. If they have multiple jobs to work on, they will prioritise the vacancies they’re most likely to fill. The roles with competition will fall to the bottom of the pile and won’t immediately get worked on. The commitment goes both ways – if you commit to working with one recruiter, they’ll put all their time and resources into your vacancy!

Take the time to meet with the recruiter

Finding the perfect fit for your business is about much more than matching a CV to a job specification. We meet with every business we recruit for to gain an in-depth understanding of the company, the team and the role. We are then able to build a picture of the perfect candidate and to better sell the company to applicants. You may be tempted to just fire over a job spec and wait for CVs to come back. But, if you take the time to meet with a recruiter at the beginning, they’ll be able to do a much better job of matching applicants to your requirements. This means that you’ll save yourself the time of receiving irrelevant CVs and meeting unsuitable candidates.

Communicate regularly

Work with a recruiter, not against them! It’s important to be responsive and to keep them updated, so they’re able to do their job properly. For example, if they send you a CV and you don’t think it’s the right fit, give them feedback, so they can make changes to what they’re looking for and provide a better result. If you have met with a candidate of theirs and like them, but you’re waiting to meet with somebody else (this could be an internal candidate or one from another agency), explain that to them. It’s important they know what’s going on, so they can manage the candidates’ expectations and keep them interested. If you leave them in the dark, they can’t pass anything on to the candidate and you could lose them.

Act fast

Due to the market, candidates are currently being snapped up quickly. So, when your recruiter sends over a CV, move fast, and get interviews booked in. Ensure your process is as short as possible because you could lose out if another company moves faster. If you find a candidate you like, make an offer! Don’t wait for a comparison because you may lose the perfect candidate whilst you’re waiting.

We hope that following our top tips on working with a recruiter will ensure you get the most out of the relationship. If you need any more information on this topic or would like to use these tips and work with us on any commercial office roles up to management and senior management level, get in touch!