10 Things you really need to know when Choosing a Recruiter

Business is slowly coming back and many of us are thinking about how we can do it differently, including reviewing our providers and advisers. Before deciding on a recruiter, think first about what you want to achieve – service, flexibility, speed, availability, guarantees, price – then partner with someone who can meet those needs.

Bernadette Eichner

Mar 15, 2020

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When choosing an accountant, lawyer, doctor, hairdresser, physiotherapist, beautician or any other such professional who will improve your life and keep you safe and sane, you do your homework, right?

You may ask business colleagues for referrals, you may jump onto Google to find out who is rated highest in your area, or you might ask your Facebook friends for a recommendation. You might even go one step further and ask for testimonials and try to find online reviews.

And then you’ll probably sit down and compare service, flexibility, availability, the returns or guarantee policy and price before making a decision.

Well, it’s the same with finding the right recruiter for your business. A professional recruiter will add real value to your business, while a ‘hack’ could end up costing you thousands of hard-earned dollars.

Professional recruiter or a Hack?

But how do you know the difference between a good recruiter and a bad one? Or perhaps we should say the difference between a professional recruiter and a ‘hack’.

Well, let me share thirty years’ experience with you. A ‘good’ recruiter profile looks something like this…

1. They consider asking lots of questions about your business to be essential to understanding its uniqueness so they can get the recruitment brief right.
2. They will want to know about your experiences in the past with recruiters but will not ask you to name names.
3. They don’t use recruitment industry jargon when they’re talking to you but rather seek to understand your industry jargon so they can be effective when interviewing candidates for you.
4. They will be very open about their candidate attraction and evaluation processes – advertising, selection criteria, interviews, everything.
5. They will ask for a job description and then question you about its currency, probing to make sure they have the depth of understanding they need to target the right people for you.
6. The advertising they charge you for will be for ads specifically targeting the skills and experience they need for YOUR job, not a database filling exercise for them.
7. They will be able to tell you about the current candidate market and jobseeker behaviour with a level of confidence because they’ve done their research and keep up to date.
8. They’ll be open about their fees and charges and what’s included and what’s not.
9. They will be able to intelligently and maturely answer the ‘why should we use you’ question.
10. Once they win the business, you will never have to chase them for an update!

Choose wisely and win

Choosing the right recruiter can change your life. Choosing one that also charges fairly can change your fortunes.