You’ve likely worked with recruitment partners in the past — or maybe you’re considering working with a recruitment partner in the near future — but do you know if this relationship has been approached optimally? What should you really expect from a successful recruitment partner relationship?
This can vary depending on what you’re looking for. Many staffing agencies provide more of a service-delivery approach; however, if you’re looking for a true strategic partner, here’s what you should expect and hold them accountable to:
- Your recruitment partner should be a strategic advisor
Gone are the days where a recruitment partner should simply focus on filling reqs, without looking at the bigger picture. Effective recruitment approaches require experts who can advise on creative strategies, technologies, sources, and recruitment marketing strategies.
Your recruitment partner needs to go beyond taking orders from your team. They need to provide value and insight back to your team. They should understand how to align talent best practices with your business goals and know what it takes for your organization to succeed with the best talent in today’s competitive environment. This way you can invest your time and energy on value-added activities instead of transactional tasks.
- Your recruitment partner should communicate your employer brand and market your opportunities as effectively as your own in-house team
Your recruitment partner should have a team full of effective and persuasive communicators who get your brand. After all, your recruitment partner is an extension of your talent team. Since they are interacting with candidates on your behalf, you’ll want to make sure they’re armed with the right messaging to communicate your employer brand and opportunities accurately, consistently, and attractively.
To do this though, they will need a little help and information from you along the way. As a best practice, you should share detailed job descriptions, screening questions and templates, and insights into your employer brand and recruitment marketing initiatives upfront. If any of these elements changes for you, (for example, if your company develops a new employee value proposition or makes changes to your existing one), you’ll want to communicate this with your recruitment partners as soon as possible.
Additionally, we suggest that you spend more time talking about the business over the role during your intake session. Your recruitment partner is not just attracting candidates to a role, but rather, attracting candidates to your organization. With that said, here are a few other details you might consider sharing:
- What’s the story of how your company started?
- What are your mission, vision, goals, and values?
- What’s your company culture like?
- How does your organization make money?
- Are you venture-backed or bootstrapped?
- What are your five-year growth plans?
- What are some of the risks in your industry?
- Who are your competitors?
This is one area that ML6 specializes in. We take the time on the front end to gain a deep understanding of our clients’ business, goals, and barriers to success to ensure we sell your organization properly and develop the best, customized strategy for your organization.
- Your recruitment partner should keep you informed with regular status updates
Our job is to take work off your plate so you can clear up time in your calendar. However, it’s still important that you spare some time to meet regularly with your recruitment partner (we recommend a weekly basis) so everyone can stay aligned and up to date on progress.
If that’s not doable for you, your recruitment partner should provide a digital status update on a weekly basis to help you stay in the know. This can be as simple as a spreadsheet that provides insights into their pipeline, candidate overviews, and a summary of the next steps. Ultimately, you should never feel in the dark about any requisition that your recruitment partner is handling for you.
Likewise, this is a good opportunity for you to stay synced up on any roles you might be recruiting for synchronously. It’s not uncommon for internal and agency recruiters to work on a search at the same time, so make sure everyone is on the same page — there’s nothing worse than a candidate being reached out to by different recruiters for the same opportunity — it can cause confusion and may have negative implications for your employer brand.
- Your recruitment partner should report back with more than just candidate interview feedback
Your recruitment partner should be reporting back with more than just a synopsis of your candidate’s qualifications and potential fit for the role. A good partner should also provide insights that can help you adjust your strategy over time. For example, is your employer brand landing well with candidates? Why are some of them declining your offers or refusing to do interviews?
Whether these insights are shared during your weekly touch base or during a project post-mortem, encapsulating and communicating key themes and making recommendations to improve your organization’s positioning is the differentiator between a good partner and a great partner.
This is another area ML6 specializes in. We take a data-driven approach that provides objective feedback on what’s working and what isn’t, which can inform key performance indicators you can measure against in the future.
- Your recruitment partner should share the good, the bad, and the ugly
Lastly, as with any good relationship, establishing trust is important to ensuring your success. That means, your recruiting partner should be open about how a search is going, even if it hasn’t been entirely successful in a given area. After all, if one of the approaches they tried was a flop, they should want you to know about it so that you can benefit from that information and avoid the same error in the future.
Is your recruiting partner not meeting the mark and delivering on any of these expectations? Get in touch with our team today to talk about how we can elevate your hiring efforts.
About ML6
ML6 is a recruitment and talent advisory firm located in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). We provide customized solutions to support our clients throughout the employee lifecycle. We help our clients attract and retain talent by advising on people programs, processes, and best practices.
