First Time Working with a Recruiter? Here’s What to Expect
Working with a Recruiter, mainly a technical recruitment firm such as Expand Reach, can bring many benefits to your company’s overall growth. Here’s what you can expect if you have never had any experience with outside recruitment assistance.
1) Negotiation/Contract Signings
Before any hiring or recruitment can take place, a simple pen-to-paper transaction must take place in the form of a standard recruitment service agreement.
In any recruitment service agreement, you will find the responsibilities of the recruitment firm. For example:
- Expand Reach will source candidates using multiple social media recruitment platforms as well as their own ATS (Application Tracking System) to find the most ideal candidates for the respected company and job given.
- Candidates will be interviewed and screened for quality ensuring the experience matches the job responsibilities needed.
Next, there would be some responsibilities for the company who’s looking to work with a recruitment firm. For example:
- The Company will provide detailed job descriptions and information about the position.
- Candidates submitted will be reviewed and feedback provided promptly to the recruitment firm.
Finally, there will be the fees associated with the services. The fees are usually calculated as a percentage rate of the starting salary for the position. For contract position, the fee will be based a percentage of the hourly rate and the number of hours worked.
In some circumstances, there are contracts that is an “exclusive”, “one-time”, or “contingent” recruitment agreements. An exclusive agreement is when a recruitment firm is the agreed sole service provided for recruitment on all open positions for your company. A one-time recruitment agreement is a single job or group of jobs recruitment term. Finally, a contingent recruitment agreement is an on-going partnership in which there is no limitations on how many recruiting agencies a company can work with and the fee for services only apply with a successful placement for the job openings.
2) Qualifying Candidates
A typical hiring process can be as simple as putting an Indeed or LinkedIn job positing ad and waiting for applicants with the right experience, wage expectations and overall fit for your organization to apply. With a recruitment firm, the guessing and wondering is taken out of the equation. Communication comes directly from the hiring manager to the account manager and team of recruiters with specific questions on the type of candidates need to be successful in the position.
Below are a couple of examples what a successful candidate needs for different positions:
- Sales Coordinator: Must have very strong communication skills, experience in selling over the phone with clients, and very personable.
- Mechanical Designer: must have strong technical design experience, engineering drawings / drafting / detailing, and strong communication skills to communicate ideas.
Here at Expand Reach all the other work is done from searching, to interview coordination, presenting offers, reference checks, coordination with onboarding information, and more. As the hiring manager, your responsibility is simply to review the resume and profile summary of the prescreened candidate and provide prompt feedback to ensure a quick and smooth flowing interview process.
3) Timeline
By working with a recruitment firm, it saves a company a copious amount of time, from not only finding the candidates, but the overall recruitment process. To find the most ideal candidates is different for every role but does follow a similar timeline. A typical recruiting cycle at Expand Reach is about 6-10 weeks from getting the job to the candidates first day.
To break this down, it takes about 1-2 weeks of searching for candidates, with messaging, emailing and initial phone calls. Another 1-2 weeks for our candidate’s qualification, screening, and submission processes. Followed by 1-2 weeks of client interviews. Then comes the offer letters, references and consideration of the candidate that can take 1-2 weeks, and finally, about 2 weeks of notice period that the candidates need to give to their current employer to start a new position.
4) Long term relationship building
Company’s use recruitment firms for a multitude of different reasons, to fill a difficult job, to save time or as a tool to improve their company’s success. The long-term relationship building is what we are looking for here at Expand Reach to understand our clients’ needs and help find the most ideal candidates to support the growth of your business. A strong and healthy business partnership with clear communication will ensure we that can happen.
Working with a specialized recruitment firm does have its benefits and when both sides have a clear understanding on what the initial expectations are is critical to the success of such a partnership.
Contact Us today to speak with one of our Recruitment Specialists and let us help you make 2022 a year where build your team with stronger talent!
Photo Credit: Corporate people photo created by katemangostar – www.freepik.com