Five Factors Contingency Recruiters Use
to Rank Your Job Opening
It’s no secret that contingency recruiters only get paid if you hire a candidate they have referred. If the recruiter interviews ten people, checks references, spends countless hours hunting prospective candidates, and in the end, a hire isn’t made, the recruiter walks away empty handed.
That’s just the nature of the business. Since a recruiter’s commission only time has to be spent with prudence, caution and thrift, it’s imperative to know how to work productively with an agency in order to minimize frustration and optimize output.
The first step to improving your ability to hire exceptional candidates from contingency recruiters is to understand how your recruiter will rank your open requisition. Here are the five most commonly used factors to rank and evaluate your job opening:
Factor #1: Difficulty of the search and your expectations. If you are looking for a needle in a haystack, or your compensation isn’t in line with market expectations, you will rank lower in this section of the job-ranking matrix. Although stringent “must have” requirements are par for the course these days, other factors should be positive: compensation is in line with market conditions, current hiring manager has favorable background and the company has a solid reputation in the market place.
Factor #2: Urgency, urgency, urgency! The more urgency you have, the more attention your search will receive. If you have four months to find the ideal candidate or your search isn’t a top priority, it won’t be the recruiters either. Top recruiters tend to focus their time and energy on the prospects that are ready and willing to pull the hiring trigger today. Behavior never lies. If it takes you two days to give the recruiter feedback whether it’s about an interview or a resume, you will be sending the recruiter a signal, which is that your search isn’t a priority for you or for them.
Factor #3: Fast-paced hiring process. If your hiring process is brisk, fluid and easy to work through, you will score very high points with contingency recruiters. In fact, if your search process is expeditious it will win the attention of both recruiters and high-caliber candidates. On the other hand, if your search process is too exhaustive, requiring interview after interview, both the recruiter and the candidate will grow weary and the likelihood of capturing top talent will significantly diminish.
Factor #4: The fee agreement, payment terms and guarantee period. It’s true, you can get some agencies to work for less than the standard 25%-30% of the candidates’ annual first year salary, but understand what that ultimately means to your search. When your search is on a recruiter’s desk, it’s never alone. It’s sitting in good company among the piles of many other searches, and you are competing for the recruiter’s commission only attention. The better the recruiter, the stiffer the competition.
Factor #5: Sense of partnership, transparency and the desire to build a relationship. Recruiters are human, and they enjoy working with clients who are willing to partner with them. Great recruiters are much more than a glorified resume source. They will tear down walls, break through buildings and climb the highest mountains for a client who treats them as a true business partner. Most recruiters are interested in building long-term relationships with their clients, and respond in kind. If you treat them like a vendor, they will behave like a vendor, you will get vendor quality candidates and vendor quality service. Treat them like a business partner and you will see a significant change in the quality of candidates, recruiter responsiveness and commitment to the search.
Working with a contingency recruiter can be highly productive and a long-term solution to filling some of your organizations most challenging positions. If you keep in mind these five factors when using external recruiters, you will be one step ahead of your competitors and strategically positioned to capitalize on some of the country’s most exclusive channel of human capital.
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