If you have read my previous blogs, you’ll know that I’m writing principally for what I believe is a neglected audience – and it’s not the big firms with their in-house recruitment teams. These are often very good but their companies recruit hundreds if not thousands of people every year. They have HR colleagues embedded in different Divisions of the firm across the globe and are kept up-to-date with all the likely comings and goings of key staff.  They know a new call centre is opening in Manchester and plan accordingly, often spending six-figure sums with a recruitment marketing specialist to make sure their recruitment is a success. However, despite their undoubted expertise and their brief to reduce costs, most good in-house teams still work with external recruiters (Resource Partners has considerable experience of providing such support) as they know there are certain specialist areas of recruitment where only a third-party expert will do.

In contrast, the audience for my current series of articles is the submerged nine-tenths of business and industry who cannot afford such support. A typical recruitment scenario for them would involve a small business owner coming into work on a Monday morning and being approached by their only valued staff member who will say quietly “can I have a word?” The inevitable result is a hastily scribbled advert that appears on S1jobs (because that’s the only job-board they have heard of) with some additional “services” tacked on because the S1 salesperson was short of target that month and the SME owner didn’t know what they were buying. CVs come in and then a crisis in the business means they all gather dust on a desk and by the time someone gets back to the applicants they have all got jobs elsewhere and the whole process repeats itself.

Alternatively, a recruitment agency is called and asked to get some CVs. Having spent a long time in the recruitment business I know that the quality of recruiter in agencies varies immensely.  Many have worked in bars, garages, call centres etc. and the industry brings them in, chews them up and, if/when they don’t make it spits them out again.  The churn can be horrific, but that’s the way it is.  That said, some do, obviously, become very good recruiters, although often it’s by selling their grandmothers en route.  And before you think this is a somewhat cynical, poacher turned gamekeeper view, I ask you to consider a client I worked with recently.  They had turned me down, preferring to go to a “big company” where they had met a senior person who promised them a first-class service.  The moment they needed to recruit someone the senior person disappeared and an inexperienced junior came on the phone.  A proper brief was not taken.  CVs appeared, that were not matched to the job.  The client called me and said, “sorry, can we start again…”

Yes, outside the rarified world of in-house recruitment, most job vacancies occur in an unplanned and random manner.  The consequent “distress purchase” recruitment is too often made without any real knowledge of what is best modern practice. A lack of relevant experience leads SME owners and line managers to repeat the mistakes of the past or be lured by false promises from recruiters or the media and somehow or other they usually muddle through. But in a market where there are increasing skills shortages and almost full employment, it’s getting more and more difficult to justify this ad hoc response. Good recruitment is vital to future success so it’s amazing that such an amateur approach is ever considered acceptable.  Sensible firms don’t plan their finances without accountants or tax speclalists yet when it comes to hiring then many just do what they did the last time and hope it works.

Even when there is planned recruitment to expand the business, there is not time for most SME owners to learn and digest all the changes in the recruitment market and act accordingly.  Job-boards are declining in popularity, social media is increasingly important but difficult to get right, and, as I explained in my last blog, candidates increasingly want to see what your brand represents and promises for them.  You may not think that your 50 employee business has an employer brand, but that’s not the way candidates see it.  Similarly, you may not think that you need to do more than stick an ad on a job-board, because “that’s where everyone looks, isn’t it?”  Sorry, the world is changing faster than ever, often driven by technology and social media and if you don’t understand how to use them you’ll suffer in comparison to those who do.

This is the single biggest area of growth for Resource Partners.  Of course, we still provide CVs for customers, but increasingly our work involves a genuine partnership where we act as adviser, consultant (in the proper sense of that word) and confidant.  It is my firm belief that recruiters who think like we do and recognise that they have to offer far more than just CVs and some cheap advertising outlets, will be far more in demand than those who, like too many small businesses, are stuck in the past and reluctant to change. 

 Mark Lynch, Director, Resource Partners