The 5 worst habits of a recruitment agency and how to avoid them

We know the recruitment industry doesn’t have the best reputation and we’ve been focused on changing this for some time now.  Step back in time perhaps five years when procurement recruitment was managed by a number of small, niche providers who put quality at the forefront of what they did and managed roles through established relationships.  Now jump forward to today to a market that has become saturated with a large number of providers, many of whom are heavily targeted on the final fee, which can adversely affect the quality of their service.

At GPA we still put quality at the forefront of what we do.  We talk regularly to our clients about exactly how they define good service from a recruitment agency and regularly hear stories about how they have been let down. We’ve come up with the five most common complaints we hear about recruitment agencies and some advice on how to avoid or fix the problems these create.

1. Not understanding the company’s needs

As with any business, not understanding a customer’s needs can be the result of a bad initial briefing or more likely it’s because the recruiter hasn’t understood or asked the right questions.  There are some really good recruiters out there and then there are those that are simply glorified sales people.  Learn to tell the difference! 

Treat your recruiters as if they were an extension of your in-house recruitment team. Immerse them in your brand and create a forum for regular contact with them. Meet them face-to-face and invite them to your office so they can get a good feel for your brand and company culture.

2. Not understanding the role

Our new clients often tell us that the last agency they spoke to was not sending them relevant candidates because they did not know what the job they were filling involved or because they had no real understanding of the company or the sector it operated within.

Use a functional specialist. Meet the consultant directly responsible for your role and ask them questions about their track record and then ask them about the state of the industry in order to get a sense of whether they know anything about it.

3. Poor communication

Many recruiters have let down both clients and candidates by not getting and/or passing on the right information at the right time.

It’s a two way street and all parties need clear, transparent information. Candidates need to be open and honest with agencies; while agencies need to keep all parties informed and involved at all stages in the process. The client should reward the investment made in the process by providing relevant information and candidate feedback.

4.  Sending the wrong candidates

One of the reasons that so many recruiters bombard clients with irrelevant CVs is that they treat their candidates like simple products and don’t go much further than conducting word searches on their candidate database in order to match requirements. A lot of recruiters concentrate on selling, not serving the candidates. Clients should also take some responsibility as they can inadvertently create a ‘CV race’ by working on a contingent basis with too many suppliers.

A good recruitment agency will interview candidates before passing them your way – ask the consultants about their process. You also need to work with an agency that respects and communicates well with candidates.  After all, they are representing your employer brand.

5. Price focused responses to contingency-based recruitment

Many recruitment agencies play the numbers game - competing against their competitors to get lots of CVs across to a client in the shortest time – it’s a price focused response to a price focused market!

Many of the bigger agencies can afford to invest in working across multiple assignments that may or may not deliver a result but to do so they generally pay less attention to quality while chasing a fee.
Work with those agencies that you know will give you 110% to try and find you the best quality candidate each and every time they work on a role.

GPA’s commitment to excellent service

It’s easy for us to say that we don’t have these bad habits but we’ve been proving for years that not all recruitment agencies should be tarred with the same brush. We pride ourselves on providing a specialist procurement recruitment service delivered by experts from within procurement, HR and recruitment.

To speak to one of our recruitment consultants about how we do things differently, get in touch.