Here’s the secret to hiring success…

Right now, what’s your number one challenge when you are looking to hire top talent? Regardless of the vagaries of the labour market or the future outlook, the overriding obstacle remains fairly constant – finding and securing the right candidates.

Q. How to solve this problem?
Utilise the services of an external recruitment partner to help with your hiring efforts.
Q. Why?
Because finding people is their job. External recruiters have their finger firmly on the pulse of the job market * every * single * day.

Not convinced? Here’s our take on why you should be using an external recruiter to help overcome your hiring obstacles.

In our many years of recruitment experience what we know to be true is the significant investment of time and effort that is required to hire well. The more senior the role, in most cases, the more complex and timely the hiring process. Employers often underestimate the total commitment required to fill a vacancy. It may seem obvious but whoever in your organisation is tasked with completing a hiring process, they also have an actual *paid* job to do – your workforce and all that they do is inextricably linked to company-wide success.

Freeing up your time (or that of your team) and shifting the responsibility for recruitment to an external partner means focussing on what it is that you actually do for a living. If you have developed a solid, enduring and trusting relationship with a recruitment partner, you can feel confident that they will in effect “own” your hiring problem – the recruiter has the time to do thorough work, because it’s their job.

Finding a qualified candidate with the right mix of skills and competencies suited to a particular role is an at times mammoth challenge in itself. Knowing what skill sets are actually required for a person to succeed in a role, well that’s an added layer of complexity. In fact, it is one of the main barriers to hiring well, going to market and not correctly identifying the hiring need or assessing applicants against a set of criteria that is not actually linked to success in the role.

It’s also one of the primary drivers for using the services of an external recruitment provider – leveraging the professional knowledge from experts in the field. The extends to not only getting the brief right, understanding what the actual need is and what knowledge, skills and abilities individuals must possess in order to perform the role effectively, but equally important, benefiting from the recruiter’s resources, connections, networks, market knowledge and expertise to deliver the best outcome.

External recruiters understand the complexity and nuance of labour markets – from cutting through the noise and attracting candidates through to engaging applicants who may be receiving multiple offers – navigating the recruitment process and uncovering creative solutions is part of their job.

Creating teams with a wide variety of viewpoints and perspectives encourages creative and innovative thinking, which is proven to improve the overall bottom line in business. We know that building diverse workplaces is an important priority for our clients. Yet despite this, for the majority of employers there is an acceptance that their current recruitment and hiring efforts are ineffective at attracting diverse candidates.

While it is not intentional, we know that many organisations focus their recruitment activities in areas that are likely to produce candidates from similar backgrounds to their current workforce. Talent acquisition is highly susceptible to unconscious bias, there are many types of bias that can creep into a recruitment process, particularly for internal hiring managers who are unfamiliar with objective candidate selection methods.

External recruitment consultancies can be highly effective at helping you connect with a more diverse range of candidates, support you to reduce bias, while also broadening your viewpoint of the type of person who will bring value to your organisation. Particularly relevant for senior level roles where competencies and requirements are often more stringent and finding applicants from diverse backgrounds can be more challenging.

It is highly likely that your organisation has a dedicated human resources function that includes responsibility for recruitment. The size of that team however varies greatly. That’s not to say that having a large HR team negates the need to use an external recruitment partner. In fact, for senior level roles, the larger the organisation the more likely the recruitment process will be outsourced to a trusted provider.

There’s no denying that internal recruitment teams are highly knowledgeable about their organisation and sector. The big difference with external recruiters is that their expertise covers an extensive range of organisations and sectors – to be successful they have to be highly knowledgeable about a lot of companies and people. While it is not a criticism, by the nature of their role, internal recruitment teams operate on a reactive basis. For external recruiters, the breadth and depth of their networks means they can reach out to passive talent when needed, they know who is considering a move and what motivators are driving that decision.

There’s also a perception that there is a greater cost to using an external partner, particularly if an organisation has an internal HR team or hiring manager willing to take on the task. However, reflecting on the above, the value derived from an external partner relative to cost consistently shows that external providers are an efficient (and cost effective) alternative if your goal is to recruit well.

Still not convinced. Take the time to look closely at your HR metrics including time to fill and quality of hire. It will give you a realistic view of the cost associated with attracting talent.

The short answer is no. There are many reasons and situations where internal hiring teams make more sense over an external provider. Aside from the obvious which can depend on the criticality or specialisation of the role, the urgency of filling the vacancy or the capacity to run the process in-house, there’s another big consideration that is often overlooked. And that’s your willingness to view the arrangement as a true partnership. If your internal hiring manager is not open to developing a conducive and collaborative relationship with an external recruiter, based on shared goals, then it is likely that the results will be underwhelming.

Hiring is not easy. Finding candidates, let alone the best candidate, is hard. When you partner with an external recruitment provider, you’re benefiting from their time, focus and energy to help you better find the right people for your company.

Decipher Group has a proven track record of sourcing hard to find talent for a range of organisations. Our job is not to find you the first candidate, it’s to find you the best candidate. Let’s talk.

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