The success of any organisation depends predominantly on the expertise, talent, and quality of their workforce. Irrespective of the size or industry, every organisation needs to accumulate a competitive team to achieve its goals. 

Uniting with the right recruitment partner will make a substantial impact on your hiring processes and improve not only the quality of hires, but will also maximise your retention of new employees.

With the annual growth forecast for NI having been revised up slightly to 4.7% for 2022, the demand for businesses to recruit high calibre professionals is more significant than ever. As a result, an increasing number of organisations are looking to work with recruitment partners to help them source the highest calibre of talent.

When choosing an executive search partner, you are selecting a representative who will best market your organisation, so their ethics, service, value for money and professionalism all have to be high on the agenda.

Below we’ve outlined 7 factors you should look for before choosing the right recruitment partner.

Industry Knowledge

There are so many recruitment organisations in the market which provide general solutions for hiring needs. However, at times, your organisation may need a specific kind of talent and expertise.

Partnering with a team who specialise in your industry denotes they will have a thorough understanding of what you are looking for, and will understand the criteria beyond the experience and skills required to be the perfect fit for your organisation.

Not to mention, they will have excellent relationships and networks with the people who are likely to be the exact candidates that you would very much want to be speaking with.

Is There a Culture Match?

You will be working very closely with your chosen recruitment partner to develop appealing job specs and ads, and regularly provide feedback to ensure candidates are well informed throughout, so it’s absolutely key that your cultures and outlook match, and that you like the consultants you are working with.

Therefore, it’s crucial that your cultures and outlook match. Having clarity on what makes a good candidate means the consultant will be able to screen for the types of soft skills that you yourself look for in an interview.

You’ll be much better placed to have frank and sometimes difficult conversations if you gel well with your recruitment partner, and having a similar outlook on what makes a good candidate from a communication point of view means the consultant is able to screen for the types of soft skills that you yourself look for in an interview.

Your recruitment partner should essentially be an extension of your management team and so hold similar viewpoints on recruitment matters.

The work we do and the clients & candidates we work with at Corvus are aligned with our company values of Do the Right Thing, Be Brave, and Be a Team.

Can They Meet Your Particular Recruitment Needs?

Often when it comes to recruitment, there is a degree of urgency involved. Rather than approaching the first recruitment practice you think of, make sure to do your research and ensure that they are working in the space that you’re hoping to recruit in. An award-winning agency recruiting for marketing superstars won’t necessarily have such a great network of IT professionals for instance.

It’s easy for recruitment companies to make bold claims, e.g “we have the best talent database around”, but if they are not the right candidates, those databases are futile. Request references or examples of how they have helped businesses in the past to hire specific talent with specific skillsets.

Different recruitment companies work in different ways and to different timelines and KPIs. Before committing to one or even a few agencies, it’s essential to discover their approach to work, and whether this aligns with your internal process.

For instance, how do they submit candidates? Is it through a portal or by email? And to whom? Every company has processes and procedures that are idiosyncratic to them, so it’s important to ensure that your chosen agency’s processes match yours in as much as is possible to allow for seamless recruitment.

The most essential component is ensuring that there are frequent and consistent communications in place by both yourself and your recruitment partner, but also with all potential candidates. The application and interview process is as much a representation of your organisation as they are of the recruitment team to whom they are in contact.

Hiring Strategies and Recruitment Techniques

It is vital to have a good understanding of the techniques and processes a recruitment organisation follows for reaching out to candidates and shortlisting the right ones. They should not merely do a Skillset- Requirement Keyword match for shortlisting.

The hiring strategies should form the principal criteria for choosing or discarding a recruitment partner. A comprehensive screening process should be an essential part of any recruitment organisations’ process. This will ultimately take some of the guesswork out of a potential interview and will pre-screen candidates for softer skills before submitting them to the client. You don’t want to be walking into an interview only to find within the first five minutes that the candidate is completely wrong for the job, often lacking key criteria which should have been picked up by the recruiter.

It’s also very important to understand how your recruitment partner will source its talent. If you’re dealing with an inexperienced consultant with a small network within an agency, they will rely on job boards to source your talent, a resource open to everyone. In doing so, they are only sourcing talent within the active job seeker market, which represents only 10% of the talent market.

A reputable recruitment consultancy consisting of experienced consultants with deep and wide networks, source their talent from the “passive job seeker market”. This talent pool is not actively looking for a new job. However, they are interested in hearing more about your company and open jobs when we contact them about it. 

Corvus created a bespoke recruitment solution, finding you the perfect fit through management alignment, behavioural insights and full profiling. Corvus Assured® lets you make better-informed hiring decisions – it’s got a 97.5% success rate. It helps eliminate bias by replacing subjectivity with tangible data. And includes behavioural insights, so you can anticipate how a candidate will behave in their new role. 

When you combine all of this with our experienced team managing your process, you have the most powerful recruitment solution on the market today.

Added Value Services

Recruitment companies should always be offering more than a shortlist of candidates. The right partner will be truly consultative. If you are working with a specialist, there is no doubt they should be providing insights into the industry job market, its trends and opportunities. While other client information will remain confidential, they can provide you with insightful market considerations and salary guidance on the role.

Within the current market, recruitment has gone beyond traditional hiring channels. Days of relying solely on job posting sites and referral systems to find potential candidates are long gone with the introduction of behavioural analysis, mobile recruitment, and social media.

You must also see if the firm is dynamic and multi-faceted. LinkedIn profiles, Glassdoor reviews, and a number of innovative channels are being widely utilised to provide a more in-depth insight into a potential candidate’s personality and aptitude. A recent study found that 122 million people received an interview through LinkedIn with 35.5 million having been hired by a person they connected with on the site.

It is also worth discussing additional services with your recruitment partners, such as onboarding assistance, Pre-Joining Training, and background check.

Customer Service and Transparency

There are so many steps and intricacies in the hiring process. When you choose a recruitment partner, their team should be agile enough to answer your queries and communicate clearly. Their customer service process should be efficient, and you should be able to communicate and discuss thoroughly at every step.

Furthermore, the hiring organisation should professional and capable to explain all the aspects of the contract or deal thoroughly. They should not make commitments which they cannot fulfil, and should openly discuss any hidden challenges. 

Reputation

Albeit, a relatively obvious criterion to consider before partnering with any recruitment organisation for your hiring processes, the reputation of the company is essential.

If a recruitment organisation has established itself as an industry-leading top talent provider, it is extremely likely they will provide you excellent services as well. The previous clients of the agency are a great way to estimate their credibility. It’s highly advisable to research the hiring organisation meticulously and request references from previous clients.

You can vouch for the recruitment agencies which can provide testimonials and reviews from past and existing clients. Client feedback shows the agency’s consistency and customer loyalty.

The recruitment organisation you are considering partnering with should be consistent and well-managed to provide you with the best hiring solutions with the best matching talent in a cost-effective manner.