A fabulous recruiter friend – yes there are some – has written this guest blog for us. Here is Emma McDonnell‘s take on the future of agency recruitment and how you can capitalise on your skills.
There has been a lot of moaning about ‘recruiters’ on Linked In of late, I see. In fact, someone we recently interviewed has previously written such a vitriolic rant about how awful recruiters were that she nearly didn’t get shortlisted for the job she eventually got… luckily I work with a sensible bunch so the right thing was done… however, I do think that we need to listen hard to what they are actually saying.
The reason that fees are dropping so low is that the in house teams simply to do not see any value in what the majority of recruiters are offering them – transactional recruitment services more suited to the 80s, a sharp suit, a bit of blather and a few phone calls/ads on Reed. Clients will pay for it, yes, but not as much as they would have in the days before Linked In (imagine), when we recruiters were the gateway. This gradual erosion of fees has led to poor recruiter behaviours, thus perpetuating the lack of value, and so the circle continues.
As the in house/RPO recruitment function has developed, and businesses are building the capability to recruit at all levels directly, it has become increasingly difficult to justify paying a 3rd party fee. However, the role of the in house recruiter is myriad, and often very stretched in terms of time and availability – in house recruiters will commonly be working on multiple roles simultaneously, sometimes more than 50 roles at any given time, all with hiring managers who are keen to land their hire and facing commercial or operational pressures. So there is a practical constraint to what they can achieve. There is a question of capability too, but more than anything else it comes down to time and resource.
Here’s a real life case study for you. I was talking with an ex colleague who is now in house and was running a programme to hire a senior exec. It was a high profile role, both internally and externally, not confidential but with a few very specific dimensions that required sensitive articulation. They had good level of interest through their own direct efforts, and a number of potential internal candidates, which meant that the investment required to run a formal search through a 3rd party was not going to be made. However, this was a role of huge strategic importance to the future of the business and as a result the senior stakeholders in the business were keen to ensure a) that coverage had been thorough and b) that the business would be making an informed decision as to who would represent the best possible hire for them at this point in time. But this is a business that is growing exponentially, both organically and through acquisition, and as a result the internal team simply did not have the capacity to run a thorough process. So I agreed to act as a plug in/plug out resource for them. Rather than convincing them to spend £30k of the company’s cash on a process they are meant to run themselves I took on the pieces of the process that I could add the most value to – the market mapping, the approach conversations, the finessing of the message and the gathering of feedback. Sending it back into the business in the form of data, lending twice as much credibility to the whole process internally. And then leaving them to run the face to face meetings, and represent themselves, which they do well. Internal line managers can exert pressure and become frustrated if they are not managed through the process effectively. It takes time and focus to truly map a market, to identify the people who are really making a difference and to establish exactly what it would take to lure them from their current role. And then to put this into a format that manages stakeholders and engages them in the process at an earlier stage. We have now run this process for entry level sales roles, niche editorial roles and account management, demonstrating that it is a process which works.
I can’t help feeling that whilst I am cannibalising the craft that has sustained me over 20 years, I can see that to nurture long standing, non-transactional relationships with hiring communities you have to be overt in where you can add value and why, over and above what exists in house. They are trying to deliver exemplary service levels to their internal clients, and this is where we as 3rd parties come in. Our perspective is valuable, our understanding of the market, our ability to benchmark across industries. The very nature of our jobs means we don’t become institutionalised. There will always be businesses that use traditional search, in the same way that you still, amazingly, see companies advertising in the Sunday Times miniscule Appointments section (see Gary Chaplins’ blog on just that subject). But for businesses that have invested in their in house capability, that know how to recruit but face peaks or particular challenges from time to time then this has to be a more practical way of engaging and delivering. Whilst there is a commercial implication there is also a sense that it will deliver real value and sustain, which, for me, is important. It has taken a move from a % fee based business model to a consulting/day rate one, and a big shift in thinking, but I am already seeing the benefits of a deeper relationship with the client, and an industry, for that matter. You do, however, have to be good at what you do, and be confident in your ability to deliver a transparent, thorough process. I think this is a great – it would be far better to work in an industry where people progressed and succeeded because they are good at what they do, rather than just being the big dog on the block/most aggressive sales person/lucky chancer of the week….
As a side note, I think it is important to flag that I do not lay the blame for poor recruiter behaviours entirely at the door of the recruitment firms – if the client organisations took the time to develop robust PSLs/trading relationships populated with suppliers that deliver value over volume then they would be rewarded by quick hires and economies of scale. But many of them do not do that, preferring to create a feeding frenzy by pitching recruiters against each other and actively encouraging aggressive behaviours in order to speed things up. It is short sighted and works for no-one – especially not the candidates who should remain at the heart of the matter. Whilst this does not apply to exec search as much as it does to the contingent players it still impacts on us and the perception of the industry as a whole – it would be brilliant to see all recruiters out there, big or small, contingent or retained, to value what they do to the point that we all actively work against these negative client behaviours and insist on professional, economically viable trading relationships, and to walk away from those clients who, for want of a better term, just take the piss.
