What are Your Recruiting Options and Which is Best?
“Acquiring the right talent is the most important key to growth. Hiring was – and still is – the most important thing we do.” – Marc Bennioff, Founder, Chairman, co-CEO of Salesforce
You have a role to fill in your company. Either the company is growing and this is a new position, or someone has left for one reason or another, and you are refilling the vacated role. Either way, you need a qualified person and it’s up to you to find them – what are your recruiting options?
There are several options and a lot of factors to consider when deciding HOW you want to go about finding the right person. In this article, we will talk about Referrals, Self External Job Posting, Contingent Recruiting, Retained Recruiting and Guaranteed Placement Recruiting to help you determine which of the recruiting options is best for you.
REFERRALS
You can ask your current staff to provide you with referrals. Maybe you even throw in a little bonus for them if their person gets hired. That bonus usually runs between $1000 and $2500 with stipulations that the new employee stays on the job for a certain amount of time. Being fully transparent, employee referrals have consistently been an employers’ top source of hires, accounting for between 30% to 40% of all hires in recent years. It saves time, it saves money, and statistically referral hires tend to be more satisfied with their job and stay longer in a position.
SELF EXTERNAL JOB POSTING
Probably the most common of recruiting options, there are many sites companies use to post job openings. LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, and ZipRecruiter are among the most popular. There are a few things to consider when exploring this option for filling a role in your company:
- It’s up to you to fill out the job description and pertinent information in such a way that you attract the right candidates.
- You typically don’t get usable feedback as to why you aren’t getting any responses, why those who respond are not the right fit, or how to improve your search
- There’s no guarantee of how much attention your post will get or how many applications you can expect to receive. LinkedIn says your post will reach over 690 million members. Indeed makes no mention of the size of their audience. Monster’s starter plan will allow you to view up to 50 resumes every month. ZipRecruiter boasts that 4 out of 5 employers get a quality candidate within the first day. Most posting sites also give you tools to rate and assess the applicants, but none mention anything about how many applicants you can expect to receive.
- It’s now up to you to comb through as many responses as you get. The last 3 job searches we recruited for at DyNexus to fill Acumatica ERP roles had us vetting 1053 potential candidates who fit our job descriptions. That’s an average of 351 candidates per job.
- Also, often the best qualified candidates aren’t actively looking for jobs so they’re not going to be looking at your job posting. Recruiters typically have the tools to find these gems that elude your search efforts.
Not to make it sound like this isn’t a strong option though – there are benefits to this type of recruiting. While there is no guarantee as to how many people will apply or to their qualifications, you can be assured that every response you get is from an interested candidate. You know they want the job and don’t have to spend time convincing them why leaving their current position would be in their best interest. Many job posting sites also allow you to pre-screen candidates with questions they must answer when they apply. You can quickly ascertain how many years of experience a candidate has within a specific industry or in working with a specific technology. It can help you pre-thin the herd to save you time & effort.
Let’s say you want to outsource the work though. You have a couple recruiting options there as well.
CONTINGENT RECRUITING
The more popular method of recruiting is called Contingent Recruiting. It is also sometimes referred to as No Win, No Fee Recruiting. Basically, it boils down to, your recruiter doesn’t get paid until you hire a candidate they present to you. With this method, you tend to get recruiters who focus on positions that are easier to fill and race to get as many candidates in front of you as quickly as possible. If you hire one of their picks, they get paid. Since there are probably a few recruiters working on each job, they’re all trying to close out the search the fastest, and they’re good at knowing which jobs they can close quickly and which ones will be tougher.
While the Contingent Recruiter has done the job posting and some initial vetting for you, this recruiting method means you’re still probably going to see more candidates than you wanted to and reject many of them for not quite meeting the criteria you’re looking for. According to recruiterslineup.com, an average Contingent Recruiter is working on anywhere between 15 to 25 open positions at a time. You can see how you might not feel very special in this type of search, and you might not be getting the very best qualified candidates you were hoping to see.
With that situation, it can also sometimes be difficult to get a hold of your Contingent Recruiter. Not only are they talking to potential candidates for you, but they’re talking to candidates for other jobs as well. They are also keeping track of up to 25 other clients who also need to talk to them, so their availability gets scarce pretty quick.
RETAINED RECRUITING
The next level in recruiting options is Retained Recruiter spends more time with you, the client, before the process even gets started. They take more time to ask probing questions they know need to be asked to find better candidates. They often work with you to create an effective job description. They give you feedback on what candidates are saying. If the salary offering is too low, if the requirements are unclear or unreasonable, they will give you the feedback and assist you in making changes that will yield the results you’re looking for.
A Retained Recruiter is paid some or all of a recruiting fee upfront with the remaining balance of their services due when and if the job is completed by them. You have “retained” their services. Part of the appeal of this type, compared to other recruiting options, is that you are still often free to pursue other avenues of finding a candidate. If you are able to fill the role that did not come from the recruiter, you do not pay the remaining balance.
The vetting process is typically more intense with a Retained Recruiter ensuring you are presented with fewer candidates, but you are presented with candidates who are more closely aligned with your needs and expectations. You usually also feel a much more personal relationship with your Retained Recruiter. Where Contingent Recruiters are averaging 15-25 clients at a time, Retained Recruiters are usually focused on 1-3 clients at a time, and the clients tend to notice the difference in attention to detail. There is still one more option to consider though.
GUARANTEED PLACEMENT RECRUITING
Guaranteed Placement Recruiters operate in a similar fashion to Retained Recruiters. A portion of the overall fee for the recruiting effort is paid upfront with the balance due upon the successful placement of a candidate. The key difference is that Guaranteed Placement Recruiting comes with a guarantee that the efforts will not stop until the role is filled.
Like with Retained Recruiting, there is an initial meeting where you are asked in-depth targeted questions to get a full understanding of the role needing filled. The Recruiter drafts a Job Description using phrasing and formatting that is not only consistent with your needs, but has proven to get the results. Of course, you have final approval of the Job Description. The Recruiter finds the best qualified candidates based on your criteria, talent you may not be able to find through job postings that only attract candidates who are actively looking for a job. They look through hundreds of resumes, rejecting many who just aren’t the right fit for various reasons.
Through dozens of interviews asking probing questions, they find the candidates you’ll want to talk to. As a client, you get more than just a resume. The Guaranteed Placement Recruiter has not only reviewed the candidate’s resume, but they have also essentially conducted the first interview acting on your behalf. You often get a brief submission highlighting the reasons why the Recruiter believes this candidate is worth your consideration. With Guaranteed Placement, you’re getting a Recruiter who essentially becomes a part of your team for the duration of the job search.
When you like a candidate, the Recruiter coordinates the first interview and any follow up interviews. They often also spend time preparing candidates for the interview process. If you don’t like them after the interview, the Recruiter not only takes the burden off your plate of telling that candidate the bad news, but they also use your feedback to continue to hone their search.
When you’re ready to make an offer to a candidate, the Recruiter will do a background check on their references and submit the feedback to you. They can present the offer to the candidate on your behalf and act as a liaison between you and the candidate for any negotiations that follow.
The Guarantee Recruiting method means that you don’t have to worry about doing any job postings or looking on your end, because the Recruiter promises to find you a great fit for your new hire and won’t stop looking until that new staff member has a signed contract. It also means that if you decide to go out and hire someone for the role on your own, you still need to pay the Recruiter for all of their time & effort. Basically you are guaranteeing to hire through them and with that they are guaranteeing to put in a lot more effort to get to know you, your company, and your needs, and match all of that to the ideal new team member.
This is the style of recruiting you get with DyNexus Group. We have a 100% success rate of filling positions because we do not stop looking until the job is filled. We also have a 90-day guarantee that states if the candidate does not work out for any reason within 90 days, we will replace them at no additional cost to you.
Guaranteed Placement Recruiting also results in saving you time and money by only sending you the very best candidates. What are those results? Remember I told you that in our previous 3 job searches, we saw 1053 candidate profiles? We looked at every single profile and rejected many of them. We reached out to hundreds of remaining candidates. Of those, we conducted dozens of interviews. We don’t waste your time submitting candidates we aren’t convinced are right for the job. Of those 1053 candidates, we presented a total of 19 candidates resulting in 3 successful hires. That’s what Guaranteed Placement means to us and why we are so proud to live by that standard of recruiting.
There are pluses & minuses to all of the recruiting options, especially depending on the role you’re hiring for and the industry you’re in. The more unique the role being hired for or the more specialized the experience and/or industry, the more a recruiter is usually recommended. The cost of the different methods varies too and is understandably a factor in deciding which is best for your company at this point. We’ll discuss the different costs of each recruiting options in our next blog “The Costs of Recruiting”.