Is Recruitment a Profession like Architecture, Accountancy or Law?

Yesterday I had lengthy telephone discussion with the CEO of a GSM Tracking, Security & Surveillance Company which has prompted me to make this post. The CEO mentioned the following points:


• Didn’t use recruitment companies

• He has used recruiters in the past

• He has been charged a 25% fee for a placement

• Recruiters just advertise on job boards and search CVs

• Recruiters do not add any value

• Why can’t a recruiter charge like any other profession such as a solicitor, Architect or Accountant?

• Transparent fees, quoting a daily charge for a set piece of work


This was music to my ears, as I believe recruiters need to be more transparent about the fees we charge but also clients need to understand the labour intensive process a good recruiter will go through to identify, target and successfully recruit a candidate for any given role.


So we discussed how the recruitment process could be split into four parts:

1. Research: A realistic time frame is agreed to identify the target skills required and make contact with targeted candidates to ascertain weather they are interested in your opportunity and receive CVs of interested parties

2. Shortlist: Time frame agreed to speak to each interested party and shortlist most suitable candidates for review by client

3. Manage interview process e.g. set up of interviews and manage candidates expectations

4. Manage offer and close stage of the process

Essentially what the client was asking for is a retained search model rather than a contingency recruitment model, which I believe to be the best option for both the client and recruiter as both appreciate the work involved in delivering high calibre candidates and both understand the fees associated with each stage of the recruitment process.

But how many clients out there are open to a retained search when the purse strings are drawn tight and internal recruitment and HR teams are looking to hire directly or drastically reduce contingency based recruitment fees.

So what I am trying to ascertain is how realistic is it for a recruiter to quote a fee for a set recruitment campaign just like a solicitor, accountant or architect would for a given project or piece of work?

I am interested in hearing the thoughts of recruiters, HR professionals and hiring managers, and would love to hear your take on the following questions?


• Is recruitment a profession on par with accountancy, architecture and law?

• Should recruiters charge a set price for a recruitment campaign whether a candidate is hired or not at the end of the process?

• What do you believe to be a fair price for carrying out a recruitment campaign weather a successful hire is made or not?

• What is a fair fee for a successful placement utilising a contingency based recruitment model?

IT Recruitment & The Lost Skills

Since the dawn on the internet job board and certainly over the last 10 years the skills of the IT Recruiter have slowly eroded. Internet job boards and CV database search has resulted in a generation of recruiters who have relied upon the posting of online advertisements or searching the same CV databases, to create a shortlist of candidates for review by the client and then pick up a fee at the end of the process.


During the early years of the internet job board there was an abundance of candidates eager to post their CV online or apply for the exciting job that promised exposure to the next big technology or the “break into banking” and the mega bucks on offer, but the candidates soon cottoned on that not every job posted exists and the recruitment agent did not always have the candidates best interests at heart!

This abundance of online talented resulted in recruiters being targeted on the number of new business calls they make and the number of new clients they can bring onboard, a pure sales mentality, there was no need for recruiters to be able to research and recruit talent, because it was readily available online at a click of a mouse button!

So where are we now? Companies, hiring managers and HR departments now have access to the same tools as any recruiter, LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook and all the online job boards. However, from my experience online CV databases certainly do not offer an abundance of highly skilled IT technologists and online advertising rarely yields a good return on investment. The age of social media has resulted in information over load and posting a link to a job on your corporate Twitter account will certainly not generate high quality candidates.

So what about recruiters who have relied on these mediums to source candidates, unfortunately they have lost the fundamental skills required to be a successful recruiter, especially in a downturn. They can now only offer the skills required for any telesales or telemarketing role and do not have alternative tools that will deliver candidates internal recruitment and HR teams do not have access to. The conclusion is many of today’s recruiters do not possess the skills required to target and source candidates who are protected by well trained gate keepers, the walls of buildings or confined to the deep web.


What do we bring to the table?

We still use job boards and online advertising, because from time to time a great candidate will post their CV online or apply to a job posting, but this is a rare and hell of a lot of luck is needed! We have always ensured we use a host of mediums to target and source a variety of candidates for our clients, we deliver candidates or clients and our competitors can not find!

How?

Simple, we use the following strategies to search, target and attract the very best talent:

• Client mapping: we search for companies with similar technical skills and industry specific knowledge in your locality

• Telephone name gathering: we build organisational charts to find out who does what within an organisation

• Boolean search of the main internet search engines and Meta search engines

• Data mining of databases and search engines

• Deep web search of social media, blogs, online communities, groups and forums

• Proactive candidate marketing (head hunting)


The skills mentioned ensure we deliver candidates that are not found by HR and internal recruitment teams or by many of our competitors who have been heavily reliant of online job boards. We are actually providing a service and adding value to the recruitment process!

We are eager for companies to use all the online tools and social media available to them to cut their cost per hire, but when there is a position that can not be filled using your normal recruitment channels we are available to demonstrate the skills many recruiters have either lost or never learnt.

We are keen to demonstrate our ability to deliver hard to find and niche skills and prove that there are recruiters who are skilled and can add value to the recruitment process.

If you have exhausted your normal recruitment channels and would like to find out how we can help you hire the niche and in demand skills your organisation needs to grow why not email info@eventus-it.com to arrange a call from one of our team.