Agency Recruiters need to appreciate the benefits of collaboration.

 

It’s not uncommon for agencies to refuse client work because it’s not quite in their area of expertise. Equally a recruiter can source 10 good candidates knowing only 1 can get the job the rest are discarded.

Imagine you had 2 people on the road: the first is thirsty and the second is hungry. A passerby offers the first a sandwich which he throws away and another passerby offers the second some water which he too discards. A small shift in attitude and communication and everyone would be a lot better off.

This is an area of recruitment that is crying out for change.

Recruitment Consultants are not in the business of serving the interests of other Recruiters. However they are presumably in the business of doing good business and in order the optimise profitability it does make sense to collaborate at some level as the travellers and their benefactors should have done.

This can be achieved quite easily by setting up an independent “clearing house”.

Jobs that come your way but don’t match your expertise should be steered towards the clearing house. Candidates you spent time and effort contacting and engaging could also be placed through the clearing house.

It’s difficult to estimate how big this market might be but let’s try.

If there are 50,000 recruitment consultants in the UK alone and each advised their clients to post 5 jobs per annum (ones you would otherwise discard) on to the clearing house that would equate to 250,000 jobs or on average 5 extra revenue earning opportunities per annum for each and every consultant in the UK.

Remember that these jobs would otherwise almost certainly be lost to the market. The value of this recycling: well you do the maths...£1 billion?

The key is whether Recruitment Consultants can work collaboratively?

Why recruitment is a sales job, why that’s wrong and what you can do about it.

I had a conversation about salesmen and commission/bonus recently. It was actually about Investment Bankers but the principle applies to all jobs where a significant proportion of your income depends on making a sale. The conclusion was that salesmen have an “unhealthy” interest in the outcome of the process.

In recruitment where the product is a person/career/livelihood this unhealthy interest in the outcome of a candidate introduction is universally recognised and simply wrong. Candidates don’t like it, Clients don’t like it and even many Recruitment Consultants don’t like it! So why do we put up with it?

The short answer is over-supply: Too many agencies, chasing too little business.

If there’s not enough to go around, suppliers start to compete on price and eventually you end up with firms “winning” commission-only contracts.

In addition whilst Clients moan about agency fees being too high they must remember that the current model forces agencies to take all the risk. The cost of hiring via agencies could be much lower and outcomes more satisfying if Clients paid well-chosen suppliers less on results and more on effort and expertise.

That’s where we need to get to.

Getting there will take more than reducing the number of suppliers but that’s the start point. To do this you’ll need to split the supply side into “them” and “us”. The “us” will be made up of agencies that start to evolve rapidly through diversification of products and services and up-skilling their consultants.

Those that make up “them” will wither away as Employers start to recognise the benefits of “us” and the dangers of “them”. Those that remain will embed their Consultancies deep within their clients’ structures, they will charge fees geared more to time spent, they will belong to a representative body, agree to a code of conduct and carry a badge showing how and why they are different.

Once there is balance between supply and demand and bearing in mind it’s likely to be the best that survive, agencies will still win new Clients by “selling” their services but will earn revenues that are less dependent on “selling” candidates to clients and clients to candidates.

As always it’s your opinion and observations I’m after.

Imperfect model.

There's a shortage of Talent and the current model used by both In-House and Agency Recruiters is a long way from perfect. Filling roles does not mean you’re getting the best candidates it sometimes reflects low expectations.

This recruitment model is not perfect (though little in life is) because you’re asking a small number of Recruiters to identify, engage and deliver the “best” candidate from a potentially large, shifting and sometimes evasive pool of candidates. Done properly this can take months of man hours or fees.

And what is “best” anyway? Many Recruiters (In-House and Agency) will not be able to connect with all possible candidates so “best” is inevitable “of the ones we could find and persuade to engage”.

There is however a potential solution! It works a bit like a search engine.

If you want to find a webpage that contains the information you’re looking for you use a search engine and it presents you with a list ranked in order of relevance.

What if you could do the same in a recruitment context and find Recruiters that already have the Candidates you’re looking for listed in order of relevance?

Uniquely only Agency Recruiters can offer this because unlike In-House Recruiters, who are tied to one Employer, Agency Recruiters can make their Candidates available to any Employers.

In the changing world of recruitment this unique selling point is worth debating particularly in the context of a possible shift away from a Client-led to a Candidate-led agency model (like Sports Agents).

Agencies need to modify their proposition retaining Consultancy where it has commercial value and embracing other propositions that offer a unique competitive Agency advantage.