As we head into the final quarter of the year, there seem to be candidates everywhere. You may be thinking the quickest way to speed up your recruitment processes and get them tied up before the end of the year is to engage with several agencies to help you. More agencies = more candidates = more choice, right?
What if you discovered that this can have a detrimental effect on your processes, creating more fatigue (for you) and haemorrhaging time?
The active market remains the same
To explain this, we first need to take a look at the active and passive candidate market. As a recruiter, it is our job to know most (if not all) of the candidates, both available and passive, in our chosen field. This includes candidates available and looking for work right now and the candidates who aren’t looking but may be tempted by the perfect and well-presented opportunity. By engaging with several recruiters in the same space means you have more recruiters, but not necessarily more candidates as the active and passive market remains the same.
Did you know?
As a recruiter we work on a “no placement no fee” basis for most of the work we do, therefore, to forecast from a business perspective, even the best recruiters out there calculate that they will not fill 100% of the roles they work on. A more reliable industry average is around 1 role placed in every 3 we work on.
Because of this, we must devote a large portion of our time to finding more work than we would need if we were assigned exclusively to each role. More time looking for work to support our revenue stream means less time available to look for candidates, jointly because there is less chance of success on each assignment and because such a large proportion of our time is spent on locating other work.
In 40 hours a week, time might typically be spent searching for work in our domain for about half of the time, and the remainder split between the open roles we are looking to fill. Less time to find candidates means allocating that time to look at candidates who are easier to find and who might be suited to multiple roles.
Let’s call this group the best candidates ON the market.
In a multi-agency “race”, it's also not uncommon for the agency to spend their time working out representation rights with the candidate and hiring organisation, often giving the undesirable outcome of stress to the client and candidate, and reputation damage to the recruiter and the hiring organisation.
Imagine what changes when a recruiter is engaged exclusively for a role.
No need to spend time looking for other work means 40 hours a week invested into finding candidates who are not necessarily active and looking for roles but who might be disrupted by a perfectly timed and well-presented opportunity. They are also only being engaged for this role by the recruiter.
Let’s call this group the best candidates IN the market.
So why are we mentioning this? Merely to explain the time management aspect of the role and how a portion of a recruiter’s time needs to be spent going out to the market to find more work. This means less time focused on your role.
Normally one might expect this vastly superior and focussed service for the customer to come at an enormous premium, but the commercials often stay the same as it’s a far better deal for the recruiter too. The candidate enjoys the experience more, the hiring organisation gets far superior representation and a much deeper view of all candidates in a given market and the recruiter feels valued and able to spend their time in a commercially productive way.
Let’s call that a win-win-win.
Show some commitment to get ahead
The best way to overcome these challenges is to work with your chosen agent exclusively. We often look at exclusive work as a win for the agency, a portion of the fee has been paid up front and we go back to business as usual. This is not the case. By showing this level of commitment early in the process the recruiter can have the confidence to solely focus on your role. The headcount has likely been signed off, the need for the role has been assessed and the payment up-front eliminates the need for the recruiter to source other work.
Your chosen recruiter should have a good lay of the land in their chosen field and be able to provide you with the best candidates in the active and passive markets. The process will be quicker and more efficient when dealing with one person and we can put a rest to the resume fatigue.
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