News »Browse Articles »
Why Recruiters are Worth What They Charge.
+2
Why Recruiters are Worth What They Charge.
-- An excerpt by Paul Hawkinson from The Fordyce Letter
"When I need a heart by-pass, rest assured that I won`t select my surgeon on the basis of what he charges."
That`s what an ailing executive recently opined when he was informed by his doctor about his arterial blockage problems.
Why then are corporate executives 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 excessive 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 K-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 ingredients 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 market-place better than a professional recruiter . . nobody! In-house human resourcers, 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 neighborhood, including the unlisted addresses so often overlooked by the 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 unfished 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 cost 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, 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 fit square pegs into round holes. 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 to senior-level 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 beings 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 or putting the job opening out to others on the recruiter`s network with crossed fingers that someone good will show up.
Source:
http://www.quinntessential.com.au/article24.htm
"When I need a heart by-pass, rest assured that I won`t select my surgeon on the basis of what he charges."
That`s what an ailing executive recently opined when he was informed by his doctor about his arterial blockage problems.
Why then are corporate executives 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 excessive 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 K-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 ingredients 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 market-place better than a professional recruiter . . nobody! In-house human resourcers, 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 neighborhood, including the unlisted addresses so often overlooked by the 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 unfished 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 cost 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, 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 fit square pegs into round holes. 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 to senior-level 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 beings 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 or putting the job opening out to others on the recruiter`s network with crossed fingers that someone good will show up.
Source:
http://www.quinntessential.com.au/article24.htm
