How To Get the Most out of Working with Your Recruiter

How To Get the Most out of Working with Your Recruiter

By MarkD

“The secret to my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world.” – Steve Jobs

You’re hiring.  You’re in this situation for one of many reasons.  Your business is growing and you need staff to keep up with growth.  You just had to let someone go.  I’m sorry, I know how difficult that is.  Someone left on their own accord.  Regardless of the reason, you need to hire someone.  You’ve also come to the decision that it will be in your best interest to utilize the services of a Recruiter.  Smart choice.  Working with the right Recruiter can save you time and money and actually be an enjoyable experience.  And that’s where this blog will prove useful.  There are simple things you can do to help make it a much more enjoyable experience.  So today, we’ll address how to get the most out of working with your Recruiter.

Communication

Communication is a two-way street.  Especially when working with your Recruiter.  And this starts from the very beginning of your search for candidates.  Having a very clear picture of the job and the ideal candidates is crucial to success.  If there are certain qualifications your candidate must meet to be considered for the position, your recruiter needs to know them.  Too much time and money can be wasted on both sides by looking for the wrong candidates.

And time especially cannot be wasted when it comes to recruiting, especially in tech right now.  There are too many openings and not enough candidates.  A recent article by JOIN sums up the top 5 tech recruiting challenges:

  1. Tech talent is expensive
  2. Great, qualified candidates are hard to find (and reach)
  3. Technical skills and requirements are constantly changing
  4. The competition is incredibly fierce
  5. Tech recruiting time frames are tighter than ever

Working with a recruiter who effectively communicates with you is crucial to the success of the process.  If the market is paying $120K to $140K for a Senior Acumatica Implementation Consultant with Construction experience, and you’re offering $80K to $100K, your search will not yield the results you’re looking for.  For our professional analysis for 2023 ERP salaries, feel free to download our free Salary Guide. Likewise, you need to communicate with your recruiter.  When your recruiter sends you a candidate that checks all the boxes (Sage Intacct, Accounting, ASC606), but you don’t respond for days, you can lose that candidate to the competition.  

Transparency

This is such an integral part of a successful interview process.  Transparency has to do with being honest and informative on your job description.  This means listing realistic requirements, duties, salaries and benefits.  We recently published an article about the benefits of being Open about Salary.  It has to do with letting your recruiter know exactly what you’re looking for.  It involves your recruiter letting you know if what you’re looking for is realistic.  If you want someone with 10 years of experience in Odoo ERP when it hasn’t been available that long, finding someone with that tenure would be impossible.  Both parties could spend a lot of time and money trying to find a unicorn that doesn’t exist.   

Your recruiter should also be transparent about pros AND cons when presenting a candidate.  You should be given all the information you need to make an informed decision.  You also need to be transparent with candidates during the interview process.  If the expectation is for that NetSuite Sales Executive to close ten new deals in their first six months, that should be part of the disclosure in the interview process.  And if the candidate your recruiter submitted isn’t quite right, being transparent about where they fell short will ensure more targeted results moving forward.

Being Prepared

When you have a Microsoft D365 BC consultant getting ready to do an implementation, the very first step of the process is to meet with the department heads and get a full understanding of what their needs are.  The consultant needs to know the data they’re working with, the processes, the reports needed, the other softwares that need to be integrated.  And then they formulate a plan before executing the implementation.  Before your recruiter begins any work on your search, you need to have a clear plan of execution in place.

There are lots of places you can go to get a basic structure for the process.  Business News Daily put out a fairly comprehensive outline.  But to get the most out of working with your recruiter, there are specifics that need to be in place:

  • Are the preliminary questions you’d like answered before a candidate is submitted?
  • Who in your company should be seeing initial submissions?
  • Who is conducting the first interview?
  • What is your preferred method of interviewing?  Phone? Zoom?  Teams?
  • If the candidate is moving to next rounds, who is the next interviewer?
  • How many interviews are required before making an offer?
  • Who needs to be involved in the offer process?
  • Do you do background checks / reference checks?

Not having this plan in place can unnecessarily prolong the process and could paint a negative picture for the candidate.  As mentioned above, if you’ve found this candidate, other companies have as well.  If they are more prepared to keep the process moving, you could lose great candidates.

Recruiting in tech in 2023 is no easy feat.  You don’t have to go it alone.  And when and if you choose to use a 3rd party recruiter, following these basic principles will greatly aid in making your recruiter a trusted advisor instead of a necessary evil.  We are always here for any questions you have and hope you will consider DyNexus Recruiting for your ERP Recruiting and Staffing needs.  At the very least, we hope this article helped you better understand how to get the most out of working with your recruiter.

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