You don’t have to work with us ... but make sure your recruiting firm is working for you!
Recently in one of my networking groups, an HR representative asked a great question about how to determine which recruiting firm gets the credit for a candidate that is submitted. Their company uses multiple recruiting firms to help fill their open positions and they were getting the same candidates submitted from each firm. She was confused as to who then gets the credit and gets paid the fee if they get hired. My first response was "The firm who presents the candidate first does ..." but I quickly followed it up with "but sometimes they will submit someone quickly without thoroughly vetting them because they know timing is everything. If they take too long vetting the candidate, and someone else submits them first, then they won't get the credit for that submission."
A conversation that lead to a great example ...
This lead to someone chiming in from a candidate perspective that said once they got contacted by four different recruiters in one day all about the same position! She said that made her feel overwhelmed and she wondered if the company hiring was that desperate ... and if they have a good relationship with all of these recruiting agencies that were contacting her. She soon realized that all these recruiters were doing was finding her resume on a job board/resume posting site and contacting her about "an opening with their client". She submitted with the first recruiter that called and politely told the others that she already applied for the position. Though sometimes when a resume is available online a recruitment firm will send it to their client to gauge interest before seeing if the candidate is interested. Why? Because when working with multiple recruiters to help fill a role ... the first one to submit the resume "wins".
Explaining the process ...
I explained to the HR rep that I used to work at a larger recruiting firm and this was the norm. We had to have multiple clients that we worked with, multiple open positions, and we had a quota of how many resumes we had to submit per day. They'd run contests for how many resumes we could find, people we could submit, etc. It was a game of "dialing for dollars" and instead of doing quality work most would focus on the quantity to hit their numbers to win the contest ... or to even just keep their job. Luckily I left that world after quickly realizing that this wasn't helpful to clients at all. I was expected to send resumes to all of my clients AND their competitors and just wait to see what would stick and who was willing to pay the fee to hire them. It made me sick to my stomach!
I since then started my firm where we work with only a few select clients at a time. We meet with them in person to understand the company and their needs ... then we go to work! We don't just send people hoping they'd stick without knowing exactly what we are looking for. We guarantee to thoroughly vet each person we send (we don't just send a resume but also include a cover sheet with all the details collected the multiple interview process) and we also guarantee to deliver a certain amount of candidates in a certain amount of time. During the search, we are working on we also don't send these candidates to any other companies until the client we are working with passes on them.
This avoids the problem of then competing with other offers to the candidate from your competitors.
Unfortunately, most of the big companies give us good recruiters a bad name. So, I'm not saying you have to work with us (even though we think we are pretty good at what we do) all I ask is that you make sure the firm you do select to work with meets your needs!
If you need any help filling openings within your company please feel free to reach out! And if we aren't the best suited to help you we will gladly help point you in the right direction to a firm that can!
Email us at contact@we-are-recruiters.com to share or learn more!