Of course, you would expect us to answer this question with a resounding “Yes!”, wouldn’t you? However, set our opinion aside and there are a number of compelling reasons why hiring a recruitment consultant is the best decision you will ever make to ensure the sustainability of your business. So, why is it worth working with a recruitment consultant? Let’s begin by asking you a question:
How much does the recruitment process cost your company?
And we don’t just mean the hard cost here. What about all the time it takes to:
We are sure that this time would be better spent managing your business! And what about the cost to your business of employing someone who doesn’t quite fit your company ethos or the role, but you felt was the nearest person from the pool of candidates? A high turnover of new employees doesn’t just increase costs in the short term. It is unsettling for the rest of the team and can have a negative impact on morale, especially when employees have to take on extra responsibilities to cover for the vacancy. There could be repercussions for your employer brand from the perspective of both internal and external customers. For more on this subject, read our insight about employer brand and the benefits of a positive candidate experience.
At Oliver King Consulting, we work with you to build a culture of positive recruitment, helping you to eliminate all the negatives from the recruitment process so you can hire the right person for the right role at the right time for your business. One of the best ways of ensuring business sustainability is to hire candidates who want to work in your company; people who are enthusiastic, and who are aligned with your business values. So, if you are thinking about recruiting and need a helping hand, or don’t have the time to find the right person for the role, it may be better for both you and your business to think seriously about hiring a recruitment consultant.
If you have never had to hire anyone before, the whole recruitment process can be daunting, and at best, challenging. Having a recruitment consultant on board means you have expert advice from the start, saving you time and money. Recruitment consultants are not the same as recruitment agencies. Although a recruitment agency can act as an intermediary between companies and candidates, it fulfils more of a functional role and normally has set fees, whether the position is filled or not. Recruitment consultants delve deeper into your company and normally charge when someone is successfully hired. We spend time with you, getting to know your business and its requirements, and building a relationship with you by learning about:
When we have discovered how your business and the people within it work, we can start to build a recruitment process together unique to your business needs, encompassing the following:
A recruitment consultant is an extension of your company, a brand ambassador focusing on the needs of your business to ensure that you attract candidates who believe in your business ethos, fit perfectly into your team and are fully committed to taking your business forward. If you are considering working with a recruitment consultant, we explain the process in more detail in our insight ‘What is a recruitment consultant?’ Or you may like to read this LinkedIn article, ‘What is a recruitment consultant and what do they do?’
In order to make a decision on how to take your recruitment process forward, you need to know the benefits of using a recruitment consultant.
At Oliver King Consulting, our in-depth knowledge of the recruitment market includes the latest trends, relevant qualifications, and best practice industry standards, along with salary levels, role-specific shortages, and other complications that employers may not know about. We have the necessary tools to find the best available candidates for any role. Our expertise means that we can advise and inform both clients and prospective candidates at each stage of the process. In addition, we can recommend alternatives to our client if the talent pool is too small to yield the quality of applicants required. Employers will have access to specialist knowledge of the job market that they may not be familiar with, such as:
When you build a relationship with a consultant, future vacancies will be simpler and more straightforward to fill, because they will be able to match candidates more closely to both the job requirements and your company culture. You can trust a recruitment professional to be able to recognise transferable skill sets or qualities that may not be apparent at first glance.
Some candidates may not be actively looking for a new position, but because recruitment consultants have a large network of connections at other companies, universities and training providers, they may be able to connect your company with a more suitable candidate than you would attract through advertising alone.
In the introduction to this article, we talked about the time it takes to hire new employees. The pressure to hire someone quickly to ensure a department is up to speed at the lowest possible cost is enormous and can be detrimental to the recruitment process. Not having the required amount of time to screen and consider candidates thoroughly may affect a company for years to come. Hiring the wrong person will affect efficiency and morale and can adversely affect an employer’s brand. Most departmental managers will regard hiring new people as secondary to their main job of running their department. But this is how it should be! By partnering with a recruitment professional, managers will regain the time they need to run their departments efficiently.
Consultants will be able to introduce you to candidates who match your company culture and job requirements because of their expertise and knowledge of those with matching qualifications and skill sets, helping you to get it right the first time.
Along with speeding up the process, there are other cost benefits of using a recruitment specialist and placing your trust in their knowledge and expertise:
Time costs: Although we addressed some of the time costs in the paragraph above, it is worth stressing that time is definitely money for recruitment. Faster hiring means a lower cost per new employee, plus frees up your time to spend working in your business.
Advertising costs: Job market expertise means recruitment consultants know where and when to advertise and what the advertisement should include attracting the right candidates the first time, reducing advertising costs.
Candidate costs: Building a relationship with prospective candidates can cost both time and money, but professional recruiters will take the time needed to do this, knowing who is a good fit for your company before you get to the interview stage. Moreover, your partnership will reduce the cost per candidate when filling future vacancies.
Staff turnover costs: The hiring, onboarding and training of new staff costs both time and money. It is therefore important to get it right the first time, so these costs are not duplicated by someone leaving the company soon after starting. A consultant will also be able to advise you about candidates that are more likely to stay, by closely matching their values to your business values.
Training costs: By using a recruitment expert who can assess transferable skills and qualities, you could save money on training, retraining or upskilling new employees.
If you would like to read more about the benefits of using a recruitment consultant., you may like to read this article from Energy Resourcing.
In addition to all the benefits we have listed, Oliver King Consulting takes an active approach to bringing a new perspective to the recruitment process. We are more than a recruitment agency. We want you to be confident in our expertise, so we can engage with candidates as an extension of your company. We are fully committed to building a relationship with our clients and candidates by understanding the needs on both sides of the equation. If you would like to know the answer to “Is it worth working with a recruitment consultant?”, talk to the experts at Oliver King Consulting about positive recruitment and the difference it can make to your business.
It is critical to the future success of your company that you recruit the right people in the right roles at the right time to take your company forward. But how can you ensure that the right people see your job advertisement? And if they do, how can you make sure that they want to work for your company? In this article we are going to explore how the recruitment process is about much more than just the way you hire employees. It is about how they perceive your brand, and how you can improve the candidate experience to make sure that your business becomes an employer of choice, attracting top-notch candidates so you have the edge over competitors in attracting new talent.
Your employer brand is about your company’s reputation as an employer. It is a form of marketing, and just like marketing, it concerns the perception of others towards your company culture and the workplace environment. If you make your company more attractive than your competitors to prospective candidates, you will attract a higher calibre of applicant.
A positive employer brand will attract the best applicants within the industry regardless of company size. It can also provide a competitive advantage because of customer perception. Customers want to work with brands who look after their employees. It implies basic morality, trustworthiness, reliability and a caring attitude.
Companies who have a strong employer brand can reap the rewards of:
Being regarded as a great place to work can give those companies an edge. In a competitive recruitment market, being regarded as a great place to work gives a business an advantage when it comes to recruitment, even over larger companies. It will attract a larger number of quality candidates, who don’t always make choices based solely on remuneration, but also take into account the culture and vision of an organisation before making their final decision.
The best candidates are attracted to businesses that have a positive employer brand perception. Therefore companies with a poor employer reputation need to compensate in other ways for not attracting the best people, for example, by offering higher salaries. In addition, if only the best candidates apply because of their employer brand perception, recruitment costs are lower per role because screening and interviewing time is greatly reduced.
Employee perceptions are also important when it comes to retaining talent. If they feel valued and closely associated with a brand’s mission and culture, they are likely to be more productive and to stay with their employer for a longer period of time, helping to create both growth and stability. This continuity is invaluable to service businesses, where customers become used to dealing with one specific person for issues. Frequent personnel changes may not be viewed positively. Employees who feel that they are listened to and know they contribute to an organisation’s success will spread their positivity about that company to others through word of mouth. This will enhance the company’s reputation as a good employer, at absolutely no cost to the company itself.You can read more about the benefits of employer branding in this white paper from LinkedIn.
In the introduction to this blog, we stated that improving the candidate experience can help your business to become an employer of choice. But what do we mean by the candidate experience?
This is about how prospective employees feel about your brand as they go through the recruitment process, from the initial search and application right through to follow-ups, interviews and the induction process. Every step of the recruitment process gives you the opportunity to create a positive experience for candidates, enhancing the employer brand.
There are lots of quite simple steps a company can take to improve the candidate experience and help to raise their profile as an employer of choice. The recruitment process starts with how you share information outside the company:
A job description needs to attract the right people to save wasting time and money on both sides. It should be clearly written and specific so candidates can match their skills and experience to the qualifications and experience you are looking for.
Here is an interesting article in The Wall Street Journal about vocabulary that can make people think twice about applying for a job.
The process should be easy to understand and accessible to all. If there are too many questions not pertinent to the role, people may just give up before they complete it. We have all completed those forms that took hours of our time, only to be rewarded with no response whatsoever. Think about how that feels and avoid common pitfalls.
It is important to communicate with prospective candidates, so they know what to expect during the interview:
A prepared candidate will be more relaxed and can let more of their personality show than one who is on edge and doesn’t know what they will be asked next.
Feedback is an essential part of the recruitment process and contributes to the candidate experience. It should start with an acknowledgement that you have received their application. Even if this is an automated response, it will be received positively by prospective employees. Post interview feedback should be a two-way experience, even when the applicant is not progressing to the final round. Talking to them in person gives recruiters the opportunity to say positive things about the interviewee as well as giving reasons why they will not progress further. This gives the candidate something to work on for future interviews and a positive appreciation of the candidate experience, even though they were not successful on this occasion. Recruiters can take the opportunity to ask what applicants thought about the whole recruitment process so it can be refined and improved.
According to Personio, there are five benefits to companies from a positive candidate experience:
Improving the candidate experience can enhance the employer brand so that your company becomes an employer of choice. This can have many benefits for the organisation including competitive advantages and cost savings, as well as a loyal, fulfilled and happy workforce. When you work with us, you don’t need to worry about the candidate’s experience, because we take care of everything for you. We act as an extension of your brand, making sure that prospective candidates have a positive perception of your company right through the recruitment process, from defining the role and the job description, through to candidate feedback, so they feel encouraged to apply for roles in the future and tell others about their positive experience, even if they were unsuccessful. If you are interested in the candidate experience and the benefits of a good employer brand, why not talk to us today to see how we can develop your recruitment process to bring you the most talented candidates.
One of the hardest things in business is growing a team. Whether you’re hiring your first employee, adding someone to a growing organisation function, or employing someone in a completely new role – recruiting can feel daunting.
There are so many factors to consider:
It’s because of these factors that many organisations opt to seek support from a recruitment consultant. But what actually is a recruitment consultant? How is a recruitment consultant different from a recruitment agency? Continue reading to find out.
Indeed.com says that ‘a recruitment consultant is a recruitment specialist who matches candidates to jobs’, and as the short version goes, they’re not wrong. But realistically, there is a lot more to us recruitment consultants than meets the eye.
The goal of a recruitment consultant is to work with organisations to find the next person to add to their team, by understanding a few things:
Upon understanding these things, the role of a recruitment consultant focuses on launching the recruitment process. This includes supporting the company with drafting an accurate job description, selecting a range of communities to advertise the role in, assessing candidates and shortlisting those with the best fit.
Within the sector, there are recruitment consultants who specialise in sector or industry, location, and organisation size. This means that an organisation can partner with a recruitment consultant who is going to best serve their needs, as a result of their skills and experience.
When you’ve made the decision to invest in the support of someone in recruitment to help you with the recruitment process, your instinct probably takes you to Google or LinkedIn. Maybe you have written a post on LinkedIn asking if anyone has recommendations, or you’ve searched ‘recruitment support near me’.
The problem here is that you’re likely then inundated with results, some of which are recruitment consultants, some of which are recruitment agencies. What is the difference and which one is best for your organisation?
Recruitment Consultant – a recruitment consultant spends time directly with the organisation to understand their needs, before helping to build a process and helping to find their new hire.
Recruitment Agency – a recruitment agency acts as an intermediary between the organisation and candidates during the recruitment process. They do the legwork, helping companies to fill positions.
(Sourced Adria Solutions)
Unlike a recruitment agency, partnering with a recruitment consultant feels like just that – a partnership. The approach to recruitment you are likely to receive is one full of advice, shared knowledge, and detail.
More often than not, a recruitment consultant’s underpinning principle is around understanding your long term goal and vision, so as to help you build a team which only adds value to this.
With this in mind it is unlikely to find that, when working with a good recruitment consultant, you suffer from a high turnover of staff. Having devoted time into understanding you and your business, this is mirrored in time spent getting to know candidates. The objective here is to ensure a few things are clear:
As your recruitment right-hand, we embed ourselves into your organisation. We work to understand your organisation as if we’re your internal HR manager. Our goal here is to learn everything about your culture, processes, projects and people, so that we can bring you a selection of quality candidates to choose from.
Once we’ve learned as much as we can, it’s time to help develop your recruitment process.
While understanding your organisation, one of the main things we are trying to determine is the need for a role. Where you may have struggled to hire previously, or have never hired before, we spend time analysing what the role may entail, the kind of skills or knowledge required for it to be fulfilled, where the role fits into the wider organisation and its goals, and what kind of person you’re looking for to fill it. To do this we may like to:
In doing this, we are then able to write a job description with you, along with adverts, person specifications, and anything else which will be useful for candidates to know whether or not this is a role they wish to apply for.
Upon gathering information about the role, the second part of the recruitment process with a consultant is attracting applicants. Here, we work with you to understand how best to advertise the position. We may ask you questions like:
The answers to these questions will determine which approach to recruiting is likely to be effective for you. Once the decision is made, we help to advertise the role, managing the logistics behind this on your behalf.
Possibly the most daunting part of recruitment. What if you have too many applicants? What if no one applies?
It is during this stage of the recruitment process that you are likely to have a lot of data on your hands, and our goal here is to help you manage this as much as you need.
When advertising the role, we take time to get to know candidates, understanding what drives and motivates them. Our goal here is to make sure that candidates we put forward to you are the ideal fit for your business.
Our full 360 view of the chosen candidate will then help support your onboarding process by giving insights where needed.
To assist you in making the decision on which candidate to choose, there are a couple of things which we will work with you to arrange:
Usually, a reference is sought after the candidate has been offered the position. Each organisation that we support will need to determine and carry out how it plans to gather references. Are you going to actively contact their previous employers where appropriate? We gather references for you, providing you with a reference report to support your onboarding process.
Finally, upon your selection of a candidate, it’s time to make an employment offer. Along with making the successful candidate aware, it’s important to maintain brand reputational value by treating unsuccessful candidates well.
We do this by notifying candidates who were not successful, offering insight into why. Recruitment consultants are an extension of your brand, and as brand ambassadors we must ensure that, should a candidate wish to apply for a future role, they are eager to because of their positive perception of your organisation.
One of the major differences between using a recruitment consultant and a recruitment agency, is what you may pay for the service.
Across the industry, rates charged vary from company to company. It is commonplace for agencies to charge a set fee, regardless of whether someone is placed in the position or not.
In comparison, when it comes to working with us, you will only ever pay us when your new starter joins you. We charge a flat fee for our service that represents the time invested by us with you. We’ll provide you with a scope of work at the outset that details this fee. If you find your new starter isn’t a perfect match, we will run the whole process again for you, at no extra cost to you. Are you thinking about taking the step and hiring a new member of your team? If you are, consider how much you would benefit from a partnership with a recruitment consultant, to help ensure you’re hiring the best possible candidate.
