From having a solid roadmap for the future to being savvy in our digital age, here are 13 answers to the question, “What are the most helpful things your team should consider before hiring a recruiter?”
- A Long-term Recruitment Roadmap
- Industry Knowledge
- Your Interview Processes
- Cultural Fit
- A Diverse Candidate Pool
- Understanding the Market
- Value Alignment
- Job and Budget Definitions
- Organizational Needs
- Recruitment Specifics
- Good Track Record and Reputation
- Cost and Return of Hiring
- Data Fluency
A Long-term Recruitment Roadmap
Hiring a recruiter is a big step, and it should signify that you’ve hit a significant and long-lasting growth spurt that will require you to bring on more people on a month-to-month basis. Alternatively, you might need to hire many people for a particular project extremely quickly; if that’s the case, you might be better off going with a contractor agency in the short term.
Before hiring a recruiter, make sure that you will have something for them to do three months from now, six months from now, and a year from now—a pipeline of upcoming projects that will need additional staff, rather than just filling immediate needs.
Dragos Badea, CEO, Yarooms
Industry Knowledge
Before hiring a recruiter, request recent and successful searches that align with your company’s industry. Working with a recruiter who specializes in your industry is valuable during the hiring process. Not only will they have a network of relevant candidates who can hit the ground running, but they can also advise you on current market conditions specific to your needs.
Benjamin Farber, President, Bristol Associates, Inc.
Your Interview Processes
If you’re going to hire a recruiter, then you need to seriously analyze and vet your interview processes to ensure that they can deal with a potentially large influx of relevant candidates.
This includes having staff on hand to do interviews in a timely manner, and also tasks or stages for the interviewees to complete ensuring that you’re making the most out of each candidate regarding analyzing whether they’re a match for the intended role.
Wendy Makinson, HR Manager, Joloda Hydraroll
Cultural Fit
When considering hiring a recruiter, ensuring they grasp the essence of your company’s culture and values is crucial. The recruiter should be able to assess the technical skills and qualifications for the position, as well as the cultural traits that match the company’s values and objectives.
This requires the recruiter to possess a high level of empathy and cultural awareness, enabling them to see the world from the viewpoint of the company and its employees and comprehend their needs and perspectives.
Finding a recruiter who can think about their role from this viewpoint will help ensure that new hires are a good fit for the company, leading to increased job satisfaction, improved morale, and higher retention rates.
Matt Artz, Business Anthropologist, Matt Artz
A Diverse Candidate Pool
Diversity is increasingly becoming a critical parameter in hiring. Unlike decades ago, when inclusiveness could be readily sacrificed for technical proficiency, recruiters are now required to source a diverse candidate pool and identify premium talent from minorities.
Not every recruiter boasts this capacity. A worrisomely substantial fraction of recruiters today still has their decision-making (when recruiting) stained with stereotypes, unconsciously favoring majorities. Therefore, it is important to inspect a recruiter’s inventory of hires for diversity and inclusiveness.
It is not enough to pump minorities into roles just to satisfy inclusiveness quotas. How well do the minorities these recruiters hire perform? How long do they stay (and grow) in the roles they fill? If a recruiter has an excellent track record of sourcing talents from disadvantaged backgrounds who spectacularly succeed in the roles they fill, such a recruiter is worth considering.
Lotus Felix, CEO, Lotus Brains Studio
Understanding the Market
When hiring a recruiter, you’re looking for someone who understands the landscape more thoroughly than you do. Reach is such a valuable metric in 2023 because it’s not about looking locally anymore.
Relocation is gaining in popularity and work-from-home policies mean sourcing can come from less expected places. If your recruiter’s connections stop at the city boundaries, you won’t land top talent for the role.
So before using a recruiter, ask them about their process—it shouldn’t be a secret. How do they plan on actively finding people outside the parameters your company has access to? If they present insights and information that’s new, that’s a good sign that they understand the hiring market nationally.
Linn Atiyeh, CEO, Bemana
Value Alignment
It is crucial to ensure that the recruiter you hire embodies the company’s values—and that it is reflected in their experience and behavior. They are the frontline representative of your organization. If the values aren’t there, it will be a challenge to find and attract candidates who share them.
They will find it difficult to establish a rapport with the right candidates and communicate the culture and mission effectively. Plus, the recruiter may miss potential candidates who would be a good fit if they don’t understand what you’re looking for.
Piotrek Sosnowski, Chief People and Culture Officer, HiJunior
Job and Budget Definitions
One key thing to consider is your company’s hiring needs and goals.
Define the job requirements. Before hiring a recruiter, you must clearly know the type of talent you need and the skills and experience required for the job. This will help you find a recruiter with experience recruiting for similar roles and understanding your company’s hiring needs.
Evaluate your budget. Recruiters often charge a fee for their services, so it’s vital to evaluate your budget and determine how much you can afford to spend on recruitment. Consider the potential return on investment from hiring a recruiter, such as the time and cost savings from outsourcing the recruitment process.
Research recruiter experience and reputation: It’s essential to research the recruiter’s experience and reputation in the industry.
Brad Cummins, Founder, Insurance Geek
Organizational Needs
When your team is considering hiring a recruiter, you need to think about your organization’s needs. Your organization’s needs for recruitment depend on its size, industry, growth stage, and current budget.
Of course, you also need to think about what roles your team is trying to fill—are they entry-level positions or executive roles that need more qualified candidates? Are you only filling roles for a few positions, or is this an ongoing process?
Plus, your team needs to think about how a recruiter will represent your organization’s brand, as they will be the first person new candidates will come into contact with when starting the entire process. Overall, these factors on the organizational end are ones to consider when hiring the right recruiter for your team.
Jonathan Krieger, VP of Sales, Fabuwood
Recruitment Specifics
In my opinion, your team should determine the recruitment needs and objectives before interviewing potential recruiters. It is critical to establish the number of positions that must be filled, the requisite abilities, and the level of experience of the candidates.
This assessment, I believe, will assist your team in selecting a recruiter who specializes in the relevant industry or job function. I consider it crucial that your team considers not just how quickly the position needs to be filled, but also how much money is available and what kind of hiring procedure will mesh best with the company’s values.
Timothy Allen, Sr. Corporate Investigator, Corporate Investigation Consulting
Good Track Record and Reputation
An effective recruiter will be well known in their community and among their industry. They must also have a track record of successful placements in their area of expertise (ideally roles similar to what you hope they will recruit for you).
Finding out shouldn’t be difficult because if they do, they’ll probably be delighted to tell you about their prior successes. Your recruiter ought to be knowledgeable about their area of expertise. Any queries you may have regarding the matter should be met with authoritative responses.
They should be knowledgeable about the important players and the industry jargon. They should actually know a lot of the same people you do. In recruitment specifically, knowledge truly is power. Your selections will be more precise and lead to more fruitful outcomes if you are knowledgeable about the subject.
Himanshu Sharma, CEO and Founder, Academy of Digital Marketing
Cost and Return of Hiring
Prior to hiring a recruiter, a company should consider the fees associated with hiring an individual in this position. There’s a difference between hiring from a recruiting agency and hiring a recruiter to fill a permanent position.
When hiring from an agency, the standard recruiting fee is 15-20% of the new hire’s first-year salary. For hard-to-fill roles, an agency may charge 25% or more, but that is up to the individual agency.
When hiring a recruiter for a permanent position, one should note that the average salary of a recruiter is from $35,000 to $150,000 per year depending on the sector, location, job, and type of recruiter. It’s up to the company to determine benefits and perks, as these will add to the bottom line of the total cost of hiring a permanent recruiter.
David Lewis, CEO and Founder, Monegenix
Data Fluency
As for the future of hiring, I see a bright future for those who are data literate and who can develop a data-driven recruitment plan. If gaining the trust of your top management is your key objective, then you must be prepared to pay the price of data.
Top recruiters may assess the available talent pool for certain roles and markets using data and then use that information to help guide hiring decisions even before a requisition is generated.
In the world of recruitment, the “purple squirrel” is a common term. More effective than anecdotal purple squirrels is a data-backed discussion with a recruiting manager, including real numbers on skill pools and densities.
Gerrid Smith, Chief Marketing Officer, Property Tax Loan Pros