To Use Multiple Recruiters or Not in Your Talent Search

Hiring for your team is a very important task. It affects how the rest of your team performs as well as your company overall. Before you start putting together a hiring plan, we have provided some questions for you to ask yourself.

DO YOU HAVE INTERNAL CAPABILITIES?

If you are hiring for a specialized professional in the creative and marketing space, whether mid-level or executive, chances are your requirements are also specific. Take a look at your internal capabilities first:

1. Do your employees offer a network of talent in this area?
2. Do you have an HR Manager or Talent Acquisition team with successful experience recruiting for this specialty?
3. Does this resource have the proper bandwidth, 20+ hours/week, to recruit for this role or roles?

If the answer is yes to #1 and/or yes to #1 and 2, then using your internal resources is a good place to start. Be sure to set a timeline and check in at a scheduled date to see how effective the internal capabilities are in producing a selection of qualified talent to choose from.

If your answer to #1 is no, and your answer to #1 and/or 2 is no, outsourcing is the best option.

WHY OUTSOURCE?

When a hiring manager needs to hire a creative professional but does not have the means to do so with internal resources, delegating this critical task to a trained professional recruiter will produce the best results.

WHY USING MULTIPLE RECRUITERS IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE

It is a common mistake that when a company needs to hire a creative or marketing professional, the plan of action must involve enlisting multiple recruiters to the task. This is counterproductive for several reasons:

• Talent often end up being contacted by multiple recruiters for the same job

• Talent are submitted after having already applied, leading to confusion for all parties

• Partially qualified talent wind up being submitted to jobs because the recruiters are working in a state of panic to get the winning candidate submitted before their competitor does

This creates a lackluster experience for the candidate and frustrates the hiring manager’s ability to find the best candidate quickly and smoothly.

HOW TO IDENTIFY A RECRUITER YOU TRUST

Once you’ve determined that entrusting your important hire to the hands of one recruiting resource is the next step, it’s time to identify the resource that you can trust. These guidelines will help you in this process:

1. Be sure that the recruiter is specialized in the creative and marketing space.
2. Ask the recruiter how they treat candidates who do not get the job. The candidate's interview experience should be a priority as a negative experience can harm not only the recruiter’s reputation but also your company’s.
3. Share your expectations for communication. Great recruiters will be receptive, responsive and offer regular updates about the search, the talent pool, and fruitful information from their conversations with talent as it relates to the opening.
4. See what former and current clients and talent have said about the recruiter. If the overall feedback is positive, you have a dedicated professional with the right experience to execute the task.
5. Discuss how the recruiter measures 'quality of hire'. Though it’s notoriously difficult to predict quality of hire, and there are no universally agreed-upon criteria for it, the recruiter should have a perspective on the question.
6. Can the recruiter tell you how they would differentiate and describe your company to prospective candidates?
7. See if the recruiter has had experiences in which a top candidate rejected an offer and what they learned from that experience.
8. Ask the recruiter what drives them and what they think is the most rewarding part of the job.

GETTING STARTED

Finding the best fit for your team is a full-time process. Before you decide to work with a recruiter, you want to consider the questions above and look for compelling indicators they will be a competent and effective partner to you.

At Elysian Staffing, we partner with you to guide you through the process towards a successful hire. Schedule a call with me to see how we can help you find the next member of your team.

Warm regards,

Jessica Ozrek

CEO | Elysian Staffing

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