Many organisations we partner with on their candidate screening process have mixed feelings about using recruitment agencies. We hear instances of being burnt, mistreated in the process, creation of fake opportunities, and even after someone has been hired, contacting the team member to poach them for opportunities with other businesses in the future.
Of course not every agency is this way and there are different levels of ethical standards, however due to the developed concerns, you need to take precautions.
Headhunting is a debated topic and at Performia we believe it can cause a lot of harm especially as one of the typical actions to motivate someone to apply for your role is through incentivising the individual to move due to more pay. This is the lowest level of motivation and worst reason for someone to move jobs for.
The first step is how candidates are attracted.
Are you aware of how your candidates are being attracted to your position, and what is motivating them to apply? As a first quality measure, ensure you know and if you are using a headhunter / recruitment agency, ensure that money is never the reason. Understand their process and how candidates are approached / communicated with.
Unfortunately as a result of some of the unethical or not so ideal treatment taking place in the industry, job seekers have also been conditioned to react in a more demanding way with the agencies and with a lot more expectations.
Some agencies tend to use approaches to persuade and push candidates and candidates set demands and expect to be persuaded.
It is a very distasteful site and it can be your business that suffers the most without even realising some of the damages.
You as the hiring manager need to make the decision of who is the best, and right person for your organisation and also need to know who to take advice from so that there is no bias or vested interest in the final decision.
The other point is that because of the traditional way of recruiting, in many roles especially high level roles, the pool of candidates that you need to tap into for your role, won’t be reached and a small group of candidates will keep getting picked up, since the method is the ‘traditional’ way of hiring. Whether that is because of hiring within the industry and using agencies who have the communication lines with particular candidates. Using this approach you can actually filter out many productive people who could perform your role but are missed out on.
Recruitment agencies can be a good way to source candidates, as ONE way to source candidates however you need to ensure you are taking precautions and ensure you are taking the following actions for best results:
1) Establish the results you need to be achieved and ensure these are communicated from the initial brief to candidates.
2) Never sell the job or your company to candidates.
3) Search for candidates yourself. There is a way to advertise to attract candidates that are better motivated for your opportunity and will also be easier to manage in the future. Performia can help you in this area.
4) Don’t rely on the agency’s screening or reference checks. Take the information and look more for yourself. Use Performia as the firewall to your business and team to ensure there is no vested interest in who is being hired, and ensure reference checks are completed fully. There have been numerous instances where we have identified fraudulent information on candidates presented by an agency to our clients’s organisations.
5) Challenge the candidates and ensure you never feel pressured to make a decision you are not comfortable with. Know who you are taking advice from.
Performia can partner with you on your next hiring through our Assisted Recruitment screening service (contact us to know more!) to ensure the right candidates are being considered for the positions being hired for. The number one priority is ensuring your business is protected from unsafe hiring decisions, and at the same time, attracting and identifying productive candidates who can otherwise be missed through traditional candidate attraction and hiring methods.
Please always ensure that whoever you partner with, has the safety and prosperity of your team as their number one priority.
I hope you have a great weekend and welcome to contact Performia with any questions or advice.