In the recruitment world, it has become increasingly common for startups and businesses looking to hire to take a competitive approach. They are engaging multiple recruitment agencies, sharing a basic brief about what they are looking for, and then leaving the recruiters to rush against each other (and the clock) to try to find a candidate that matches the profile.
This approach often creates a focus on speed and adequacy as opposed to thoroughness and good quality.
Here are some other reasons why engaging with ONE recruiter will be a beneficial choice for your business’s brand in the long run.
Project Managing the Hiring Process
As the hiring manager, managing a recruitment process can be a time-consuming process. It becomes increasingly difficult to manage relationships with a number of different recruiters and trying to remember what information you shared with which recruiter about which job posting on what platform. Inevitably, communications will lack consistency and might even get lost completely. This can also filter down through to the applicants and their overall experience in the hiring process.
Working with one recruiter ensures that you are able to convey the important details to them and therefore the messaging that the candidates receive will be clear and consistent and they will not be bombombarded on LinkedIn or over email via the same position time and time again.
Emphasizing Quality over Speed
In an environment where only the first recruiter to find a suitable candidate gets remunerated for their time and effort, working with multiple recruitment agencies encourages the recruiter to focus on speed.
This leads to candidates who fit the profile on the surface. However, ample time is generally not spent to find the most suitable candidate with the best chances of long term success.
This affects your brand because the person who ultimately fills the role will be working at your company. Hiring the first person who ticks the boxes can be a mistake if the person is not going to be a good culture add for the organisation or does not possess the required skills or attitudes.
Having the wrong person in the role is often worse than not filling the role at all, especially at the senior levels.
Since the best candidates are usually not actively job searching, it takes longer to identify these candidates and speak to them about the possibility of switching jobs to join your company. Engage with a single recruiter who doesn’t just focus on skill sets and experience, but can also identify where a candidate’s personality and values can fit well into a company culture and ensures that the management style is aligned to suit their needs and career goals.
Taking Responsibility for the Hiring Process
When working with multiple recruitment agencies, the hiring manager is still ultimately responsible for the overall hiring process. If we think about it from the Recruiter’s perspective, if they are working on 4 roles, 2 of those roles are exclusive to them and 2 are not, they will most likely work on the exclusive roles as they know they have full responsibility and ownership to deliver. This can also be explained by the socio-psychological phenomenon, ‘Diffusion of Responsibility’; whereby a person is less likely to take responsibility for an action when others are present. You can find some great examples and explanations here
Engaging with one recruiter shifts the full responsibility for filling the role to the recruiter making it their job to keep working until the most relevant and best fit candidate is found.
Saving Money
Working with one recruiter can reduce your recruitment costs. Since the recruiter knows that they will be guaranteed income from the engagement, they should be able to reduce their fees to reflect that reality.
While some business owners or hiring managers might be concerned that working exclusively with one recruiter limits their opportunities, this is not the case. In fact, it actually increases your chances of success and can decrease your costs as discussed above. Make sure that you are working with a recruiter who you trust, who will take responsibility for the entire hiring process, and will ensure a degree of consistency both for you and the potential candidates right up until your new employee is ready to start.
