Fire Your Recruiter!

 

If you hire for your company and have worked with a recruitment firm – or worse yet a solo agent – chances are you have had a bad experience. You might have received an avalanche of resumes, profiles that had limited alignment with your roles, candidates who did not fit your company culture, over-the-top follow up or none at all. I could go on and probably so could you.

Truth is, most recruiters suck. The industry has ridiculously low barriers to entry and so virtually any John Doe can become a recruiter overnight.

Here comes the hard truth though.

The reason John is still in business is you! You are the one who signed an agreement with him without doing your homework. You are the one who carelessly allowed him to (mis)represent your company to jobseekers. And you are the one who allows him to continue bombarding you with CVs in hopes that one out of the pile will be good enough for the seat you need to fill.

I get it. The service is free unless you get your star candidate, so why not opt into receiving an influx of resumes, perhaps from multiple Johns? If you get a hire out of it all then it’s all worth it, and if you don’t – then nothing to lose, right?

Wrong!

The most precious commodity you’ve got in the recruitment game is your employer brand. If you don’t know what it is, you should have come to Pronexia’s Employer Branding Conference last year. Employer brand = your company’s reputation as a place to work. It’s what makes the A-players in your field flock to your company VS going to a competitor. You know what John is doing, on top of annoying the hell out of you? He’s annoying the hell out of job seekers and all they remember is your company name along the way. The more John sucks, the more they wonder why you are allowing him to talk about you. They question how world-class you really are if you are utterly careless when choosing who makes the first impression on your potential hires.

The hiring market is getting more competitive and top talent is becoming more difficult to attract. The last thing you should be doing is shattering your employer image and allowing somebody of questionable reputation to affect yours.

So the time has finally come: fire your recruiter.

The job market is becoming increasingly more candidate-driven. So what can you do to improve the odds of attracting and hiring the best possible talent?

 

1. Define your company culture! Last year, we curated and hosted an incredible event on the topic of Company Culture. This event facilitated experience sharing between 20 speakers and 100 hiring managers from a variety of Montreal businesses. Learn from the businesses that do it right, conduct regular culture assessments and crystalize your firm’s unique DNA.

 

2. Take care of your employer brand! Our conference in 2014 focused on this exact topic. Employer brand means your reputation, your image as an employer both externally and internally. What do your employees or the candidates you interview say about you on such sites as Glassdoor? Place candidate and employee experience at the core of your HR strategy.

 

3. Hire based on fit! Experience is important, crucial in some cases, but it never trumps the hire’s fit within your company culture. An employee who has the best skill, yet does not get along with the team, will cause more harm than the value he brings.

 

4. Leave it to the pros! My team interviews over 1,000 professionals every year. We hire for the most sought after employers in Montreal and, more recently, Vancouver. We work relentlessly on our own company culture and employer brand, and help companies with theirs. Give us a call to see how we can resolve your hiring challenges!

 

For the sake of your employer brand, for the incredible company culture you spent years building, for the future of your reputation as an innovative place to work:

Fire your recruiter (and call us instead) – we can help!