Getting The Best From Your Recruitment Agency
How Employers Can Get The Best Out of Their Recruitment Consultant
While our reputation means we attract more than our fair share of good candidates, there is a shortage of job hunters across both accountancy and office support roles through Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and beyond. We are therefore working closely with our clients to help them understand how we can work in partnership to make their recruitment processes more effective.
The most effective client-recruitment consultancy relationships are long-term ones based on mutual respect and good communication. Ultimately these relationships should:
- Help the client attract the best possible staff to your team as the recruiter will be able to effectively sell the benefits of working for your company;
- Reduce the number of bad hires as your recruiter will understand both your culture and appreciate the soft skills you need as well as the technical expertise. A reduction in bad hires is a huge cost saving both in terms of time and productivity; and
- Minimise the time that you need to invest in the hiring process as the recruiter will better filter the CVs they send you and will have set up streamlined processes to ensure a smooth process.
Partnerships make sense from our perspective too as we need to spend less time looking for new business and an even higher percentage of candidates we put forward get hired and pass their probationary periods. This is efficient for us and further builds our reputation leading to more repeat business and referrals.
Here is how you can get the best out of us (or any other reputable recruitment consultancy that acts as a recruitment partner) and what you should expect from us.
Getting the best out of your Recruiter
- Let us under your skin – your recruiter needs to understand your values and your plans for the wider business so that we can better filter which candidates will be suitable for your business, meaning you spend less time reviewing CVs or meeting inappropriate candidates. It also makes it easier for us to excite candidates about vacancies we are working on.
- Help your recruiter sell each role – the more information you can give us about each role and the prospects for career development, the easier it is for us to get candidates excited and to picture their future with your company.
- Make your process efficient – good candidates are only briefly on the market so the more compact your recruitment process the more likely you are to secure your preferred candidate. Get budget sign-off, set out a timeline for the recruitment process and schedule time in key stakeholder holders’ diaries before you start the process. Once you press go, do your utmost to stick to the timeline. Processes that are drawn out or stall inevitably result in the best candidates accepting offers elsewhere before your process completes, resulting in wasted time (for both you and us).
- Communicate with us throughout the process – a smooth recruitment process is reassuring for candidates. Giving candidates feedback promptly after each interview makes a huge difference to the likelihood they will accept a role if they are offered it. If there are delays in the process let us know as early as possible so that we can manage the candidate’s expectations.
- Listen to us – we are specialist consultants and know the finance and office support talent markets in Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. We meet with our candidates face to face and we brief them in detail about new roles as well as exploring their motivations for moving on. By all means, ignore our advice, but please give it consideration first.
What to expect from your Recruiter
The client-recruitment consultancy relationship is a partnership and you should know what to expect from the consultancies you partner with. We
- are committed to helping you build the strongest possible team as efficiently as possible;
- will be clear with you about how we will approach the marketing of each role and the resources we will commit to it;
- will communicate with you clearly in a timely fashion;
- will meet any timeframes that we agree to;
- will be honest with you and will gently challenge you where we feel it will benefit you long-term; and
- represent your organisation’s interests as positively as possible without setting unrealistic expectations;
- keep you briefed with feedback candidates give us about your organisation and role as well as keep you updated about where they are with other interview processes; and
- will at all times endeavour to make sure that you feel you made the right choice by choosing us as your recruitment partner as we know there are a lot of agencies out there.
Clarity Appointments is an independent recruitment agency specialising in accountancy and office vacancies. Situated between St Neots and Cambridge, we work within Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, with some clients further-reaching due to work won through referrals.
Clare Wight is the founder and Managing Director of Clarity Appointments, an independent recruitment specialist. She served time as a Regional Director for The Employment Agents Movement, supporting other independent recruiters.
And she remains an active member of Members Only, a recruitment leadership network promoting high ethical standards, collaboration, diversity, equity and inclusion.
She believes business owners are more fulfilled and higher-performing when they provide emotional and professional business support to other business owners, even those they deem to be competitors. She does this actively, whilst challenging and updating her skills and knowledge of the recruitment sector, enabling her to offer the very best of advice to firms looking to make their next hire.
Clare's also the founder and a contributor to a monthly digest called SME Monthly. SME Monthly is a collaboration with other experts in their field, designed to give SME business owners the tools they need to stay up to date and relevant in a broad range of skills including:
Recruitment; Human Resources; IT and Cyber Security; Finance; Well-being; Marketing
Here are a couple of recent issues:
To subscribe, please use the link
Or book a chat with Clare here.
