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:
- Is the person going to fit into the culture of the company?
- Are you going to find someone who has the right skills and knowledge?
- Is this role even interesting to candidates?
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.
What is a recruitment consultant?
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:
- Why are they thinking of hiring?
- What does the role entail and how does it fit into the bigger picture for the company?
- What kind of person (and role) would suit the needs of the already existing team?
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.
Recruitment Consultant vs Recruitment Agency – which is best?
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:
- What are transferable skills that the candidate has which will support their role?
- What values do they share with your brand?
- How do they like to work, and does this mirror what you need from a candidate?
Recruitment Process with a consultant
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.
Defining the role
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:
- Visit your site
- Speak with other members of the team
- Shadow the department
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.
Attracting applicants
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:
- How have you hired for roles previously?
- Are you likely to find someone from within your network?
- Do you have any local partnerships with apprenticeship providers, graduates etc?
- Is there anyone internally who may want to apply for the position?
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.
Applications and selection
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.
Making an appointment
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:
- References
- Employment offer
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.
How do recruitment consultants price?
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.
