7 reasons why your PSL could find you in the firing line

1. It contains old-fashioned recruiters – CV punting and keyword searches no longer cut it when it comes to finding gifted technical people that are right for your organisation

2. You are using recruiters with a bad rep – of course, they’re not going to tell you they have a bad rep! You will lose the interest of great candidates if you associate your business with poor recruiters.

3. You’ve favoured size over candidate satisfaction – with approximately 25,000 recruitment agencies now operating in the UK, candidates have huge choice over who they go to. Their decision is largely based on their satisfaction. Do the recruiters within the agencies on your PSL communicate well? Are they proactive, organised and understanding? Ask your recent recruits what their experience was like.

4. You let the agencies you use recruit the wrong staff – if they’re not doing a good job and adding value, get rid! Regular PSL reviews are key. A lot can change in your business over 12 months, so why are your recruitment methods not changing?

5. You do not promote PSL reviews  - how will you find the good ones if the only recruitment businesses that know your PSL is being reviewed are the ones on your PSL?

6. It is too generalist – your PSL must contain recruiters who specialise in the departments you are going to be recruiting for. If you know that your focus is on Sales and IT over the next 12-24 months, ensure your PSL contains recruitment businesses that specialise in Sales and/or IT.

7. It contains recruitment agencies - You should look for recruitment partners who display that they offer more than bums on seats!

·         Recruitment agency A will copy and paste the job description sent by yourself and post it on to a job board. They will not call you to discuss an inclusion of your company’s cultures and values on said job description to help them identify the most fitting personality traits within potential candidates. Instead, if they do call, it is to clarify the salary for the purposes of working out what their commission would be and delegate to a junior consultant if they do not feel it is “worth it”. They will then send you a shortlist of 10-15 CVs for you to sift through based on a keyword search in their super-duper database of 100,000. After spending an entire afternoon (in between emails and phone calls) identifying which ones actually fit your organisation’s ethos (which you could have done with your recruiter doing), you shortlist 5 for interview. You spend an entire day out of your business interviewing only to conclude that only one candidate has the required skills and practical experience but you think they are arrogant and a bit self-absorbed. You will therefore need to monitor how they engage with the other members of your team and may eventually need to get rid and start the entire process again!

·         Recruitment agency B will allow a consultant to come and meet with you to discuss your challenges. They will work with you to put together an attractive job description that highlights the type of person that would best fit the role and will identify a realistic deadline based on your requirements. They ask you to decide on 3-4 key competency questions to be answered later by all shortlisted candidates. They ask you to complete a quick psychometric assessment to identify the cultural and behavioural traits of the person you are looking for which they will later benchmark against the results of shortlisted candidate’s assessments. They keep you and potentially matching candidates informed of any progress on a weekly basis and adjust their bespoke search where necessary. The final shortlist that they present to you (Note: you have not yet had to read a single CV!) contains candidates who not only have the correct skills and experience required, but who fit within your organisation both behaviourally and culturally and therefore have a far better prospect of remaining with you for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, they have answered key competency questions in detail and have been presented altogether with individual comments from the recruitment consultant you have been dealing with.

Which would you choose?

Give prospective candidates the right first impression of your organisation’s brand and what you stand for. Find the best recruitment partner to stand alongside and represent you.