How to decipher between the good, the bad, the ugly and the awesome to find the right fit for you.
When you look out on the vast world of available resources for recruitment support there is just an overwhelming amount of information. How do you sift through it all? How do you determine what is right for you? And who has time for all of that! Lucky for you, I do! And I’m going to do enough of that homework for you that you’ll just need to plug in who you are and what’s important to you and you’ll be right there with your answer as to which direction to head. You are welcome! 😀
So let’s start with talking about you, I mean that is the most interesting subject anyway! I know I’m being a bit over the top, but honestly you do need to determine what your own needs are in order to know where you want to go. So let’s take a look at a few key questions to help provide context to this important step in the process.
Think about yourself and your business:
Available time - how much time do you have to dedicate to recruitment? Multiply this by how much recruitment you anticipate you’ll need to do. I.E. you can comfortably give 1.5 hours per week to recruitment activities but you need to hire 3 people in the next two months…is a half hour per recruitment activity enough?
Available resources - do you have anyone to help you, do you have accounts with an advertising platform, do you have any resources to help review and shortlist? I.e. are you confident you have the tools you need to conduct a successful recruitment campaign?
Available Budget - do you have money set aside to help with recruitment activities? If so, how deep are your pockets because some options we’ll talk about below are spendy! If you don’t have a big budget for recruitment, we’ll explore options to maximise every dollar you may spend.
Available Network - do you have a strong referral network within your profession to give you access to suitable candidates? Having a great network can reduce the strain on your resources for recruitment and may shape how much you want to tap into others networks.
Now that you have some established considerations and know some of your own limits and boundaries, it will help you to see how some of the available options may work for you and your business. Use those descriptors to understand which bucket to put each available option in:
The Good - good gets you an outcome in a reasonable amount of time at a reasonable cost (reasonable cost is subjective, so it’s your reasonable cost we are talking about)
The Bad - pretty much as the name indicates, it doesn’t result in getting you either the outcome you wanted or you get an outcome but a poor experience or even not quite the right fit.
The Ugly - options that waste your time, are overpriced for what they deliver, poor outcomes or no outcomes and the service levels are 0 out of 10.
The Awesome - this service level not only saves you time, it cares about your business, is priced right for your needs, and gets you the outcome you wanted with the culture fit bells and whistles.
Next up, what are some of the options available to business owners and hiring managers for recruitment support?
Recruitment Agency - a recruitment agency (also known as employment agency) is an outsourced model of recruitment. They source, screen and select candidates and may provide a shortlist or potentially directly appoint someone into your organisation if the role is temporary, taking them onto their payroll and charging you a weekly fee based on the hours worked. Within this option there are a few segments we should consider.
Large Multinational - these are agencies which span the globe, are often well established brands with a large corporate machine backing them.
Mid-Size Australia Wide - an agency which may have a few branches in Australia, services.
Boutique - a smaller, often specialised firm that provides a more personalised recruitment service.
Generalist vs. Specialist - any of the above options can be either generalist or specialists. A generalist is an agency that is happy to try and fill any role that comes their way and doesn’t necessarily have a deep talent pool on hand for any particular role. A specialist (such as a real estate recruiter) may have a deep talent pool in their area of specialty but not have the resources to recruit any role within an organisation that does more than one thing.
The Good - if you’re time poor a recruitment agency will typically take the entire process out of your hands and only present to you their top few candidates.
The Bad - they can come at a significant cost, usually charging a percentage of the annual salary package for the person employed. You may have a budget of $80k plus super and end up spending over $13k plus gst to use that agency for one person. If you have more that one recruitment in a year the cost can increase drastically.
The Ugly - Recruitment agencies are notorious for high turnover, many with “churn ‘em and burn ‘em” mentalities. As they are a sales organisation who does recruitment there is less room for flexibility on price and consultants who may be more interested in filling the role to “get the sale” than getting the right fit.
Do-it-yourself - while it speaks for itself it’s worth noting that some people and organisations are more capable or have more resources than others. They may have a dedicated Human Resources or Recruitment team who have been trained in recruitment process and strategy.
The Good - costs are more controlled as it’s part of salaries already budgeted for and you can embed your company values into every stage of the process.
The Bad - if you don’t have a team to support you, it’s a big time commitment and can impact your ability to meet your other business needs.
The Ugly - If you’re DIY’ing it and you don’t know what you’re doing you could really put yourself and your business at risk of hiring the really wrong person or even breaching legislation.
Hiring Partner - spoiler alert…we’re the Awesome! A Hiring Partner is the best of all worlds. They are an external resource which doesn’t drain your salary budget resources. We don’t charge a huge fee to do something you could do yourself if you had more time or energy. We can tailor our service offerings to suit your budget. We have vast networks and the ability to use your brand to attract great candidates to your talent pool. We can be as hands-on or hands-off as you want us to be in order to get the result that works best for you. Finally we care about you, your business, and the success of your business culture not just now but far into the future. It’s my business and I will care about your business as if it were my own.
So let’s bring it home and back to what’s most important - deciding what’s right for you. I encourage you to:
Think about the reasons you needed to hire in the first place
Think about your ideal outcome
Then choose the right provider (secret’s out….it’s me)
Get in touch today to see how Career Pursuit can become your best kept secret Hiring Partner today.
Ash ✨