Why Recruiters
Are Worth What They Charge
"When I need a heart by-pass, rest assured
that I won't select my surgeon on the basis of what they charge."
That's what an ailing executive recently opined
when he was informed by his doctor about his arterial blockage
problems.
Why then can corporate executives be so tightfisted when dealing
with what is so commonly thought of as the "heartbeat"
of their companies . . . top talent?
Companies think very little about paying the often
exorbitant fees charged by their outside accounting and legal
firms . . . or even to the gaggle of consultants who promise cost-cutting
and streamlining miracles in other areas of operations.
Yet, when faced with brain drains, talent deficiencies
or the need to replace an employee with a better one, their thoughts
too often turn to parsimony. This Wal-mart mentality belies and
contradicts their stated objectives to "hire the best,"
especially at pecking order levels below the "big picture"
executive suite inhabitants.
Of course recruiting fees can vary from firm to
firm but, when they do, you will almost always find that those
on the low side are sure to exclude some very key portions of
the process, all of which are vital to providing the indispensable
services necessary to satisfy the needs of the employer.
So why are recruiters worth what they
charge? Just a few of the often unspoken reasons are:
Expertise - Nobody knows
the employment marketplace better than a professional recruiter
. . . nobody! In-house human resources, no matter how effective,
view the marketplace through an imperfect or misrepresentative
prism and tunnel vision is their occupational hazard.
Just as physicians are cautioned against treating
members of their own families, so too is it folly for an in-house
H/R professional to believe that they have an undistorted and
unbiased picture of the employment landscape. They are vulnerable
to the pressures of internal politics and cultural dimensions
which do not hinder the outsider.
Street-smart recruiters already know the neighbor-hood,
including the unlisted addresses so often overlooked by the HR
insiders.
Cast a wider net - A professional
fisherman will always have more to show than a weekend angler.
Recruiters are in the marketplace day in and day out. They know
the un-fished coves, reefs and inlets that are unknown to others.
The job-hunter bookshelves are filled with lore about the "hidden
job market." The same holds true for professional recruiters
who have a detailed roadmap to the hidden talent sources which
will never be accessed by newspaper ads, alumni associations,
applicant databases, the Internet or any of the other more familiar
sources of people.
There are occasional pearls through these sources
(and someone inevitably wins the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes
too) but you have to shuck an awful lot of smelly oysters to find
them. Recruiters only give you oysters proven to contain pearls.
Your only job is to determine which pearl is the best.
Want to catch what you're fishing for? Hire a
guide!
Cost - There is a misconception
among employers that the cost of a hire equals the cost of the
ads run to attract the person hired. Nothing could be further
from reality.
Try adding these to the true costs and
you'll see just how cost effective an outside recruiter can be:
Salaries and benefits of the employment/recruiting
staffs plus those of the line managers involved in the hiring
activity (who are not productive in their normal job pursuits
when they're out recruiting); travel, lodging and entertainment
expenses of in-house recruiters; source development costs; overhead
expenses including (but not limited to) telephone, office space,
postage, PR literature, applicant database maintenance, Internet
access, reference checking, clerical costs to correspond with
the hundreds of unqualified respondents, etc.
Unbiased third party input
- Contrary to what some believe, recruiters don't try to put square
employees into round jobs. A recruiter's stock-in-trade is their
integrity and their reputation for finding someone better than
a company could have found for themselves.
For a mid-level to senior executive, the average
recruiter may develop a "long list" of a hundred or
more possibilities. Each must be called and evaluated against
the position specifications as well as the personality "fit"
with the company and the people with whom they will ultimately
work. Once this is winnowed down to the "short list,"
an even more intensive interviewing process begins to narrow the
search to a panel of finalists for review by the client.
This process is not, as some believe, simply romping
through the file cabinets, job boards or putting the job opening
out to others on the recruiter's network with crossed fingers
that someone good will show up.
It is highly unlikely that a professional recruiter
will be plowing brand new ground with your opening. They deal
within spheres of influence far more familiar with your needs
than any internal recruiter and, more often than not, view the
finalists as people who are competent to solve client problems
rather than just fill an open slot in the organizational chart.
Because they want to do business with you again
and again, they are looking for (and challenging you to excellence
by hiring) the "truly exceptional" rather than the "just
satisfactory" so often settled for by in-house hirers.
Confidentiality - Advertising
or otherwise publicly pro-claiming an opening, aside from its
cost and demonstrated ineffectiveness for sensitive senior level
openings, often creates anxiety and apprehension among the advertiser's
current employees who wonder why they aren't being considered
or worry about newcomer transition problems. Just as often it
alerts competitors to a current weakness or void within the company.
Speed - The recruiting
process is always faster through a search professional who is
continually tapped into the talent marketplace than one having
to start the process from scratch. For every day that a key opening
remains unfilled, a company's other employees must grudgingly
do double duty. And this doesn't factor in the profit opportunities
or competitive advantages lost to a company because a position
remains unfilled or done on a part-time basis by others less qualified.
Post-Hire Downtime - Not
only is speed an essential part of the professional recruiter's
process, the ability to locate a person who can immediately "hit
the ground running" with a minimum of "ramp-up time"
saves time after the hire. All too often, a hire selected through
less effective sources, offering a smaller talent pool, requires
several months of expensive training and orientation.
Reality - Professional
recruiters often recognize and have a duty to inform clients that
they may be mistaken as to the type of person sought, the salary
required to attract them or the possibilities that the solution
might just lie in areas outside the traditional target industries
. . . something an internal recruiter is politically disinclined
to do. Too many hirers fail to understand that a professional
recruiter's pr i-mary function is not necessarily to fill a slot
but to provide the right candidate to solve a problem.
Negotiation - Master negotiator
Herb Cohen says that "negotiation is the analysis of information,
time and power to affect behavior . . . the meeting of needs (yours
and others) to make things happen the way you want them to."
As a buffer and informed intermediary, the professional recruiter
is better able to blend the needs and wants of both parties to
arrive at a mutually beneficial arrangement with-out the polarizing
roadblocks which too frequently materialize in face-to-face dealings.
Prioritizing company resources
- It is often amazing to see how much of a company's revenues
are squandered on non-productive perks for existing high-level
employees while they penny-pinch on what is every company's life-blood
. . . talent acquisition.
Club memberships and the like may be fine, but no one with an
IQ higher than Forrest Gump's believes that these expenditures
contribute to a company's profit margin. But one well-placed employee
can be the cause of a company's profits skyrocketing. And the
fee for having hired these people pales in insignificance when
compared to the contributions they make to the bottom line.
The next time you think a recruiter's fees are
too high, put them in the proper perspective before asking for
that bargain Blue Light special or spinning your wheels thrash-in
about trying to fill vital openings with less effective (but not
necessarily less expensive) do-it-yourself methods. Savvy executives
learned long ago that the fee paid to a recruiter is a shrewd
strategic investment, not an extraneous expense.
Written by Paul Hawkinson, Publisher of The Fordyce
Letter (www.fordyceletter.com)
