Recruiters and Client Companies, Why can’t we be friends?
As a third party recruiter, I find myself very confused by the actions of many companies that hire third party recruiters on a contingency basis. Many companies call and ask third party recruiters to perform searches while running advertisements in newspapers, on job boards, and internal postings. We are not talking about companies that throw recruiters bones to get them to stop calling, I am talking about companies calling my and other recruitering firms and asking for help. If the company believes they can find the employee on their own, why bother dragging recruiters into the process? I suppose the Human Resources (or whatever they are called today) believe by calling a recruiter they increase the odds of finding the best candidate. Usually they hold the recruiter’s candidates to a higher standard because the recruiter is being paid a fee.
Sometimes I get the feeling that the Human Resouces Recruiters and Managers in companies are playing a perverse kind of game where if they find the candiate on their own after hiring a recruiter, they can show how valuable they are to the company. After all, a recruitment fee has been saved. This presents potential problems for the hiring corporation:
1. The third party recruiter might not be willing to work with the company again. This may not be seen as a problem because there is always another recruiter willing to take the job, even if they are not as competent as the origingal recruiter.
2. A law suit may ensue if the third party recruiter presents a candidate and the company later “finds the candidate on their own”. Finding candidates after being provided with a name and a resume is not too difficult in the age of the Monster and other job boards. After all, if the candidate already has his or her name on the job board you would have found it eventually, right? The jury is still out on this, so to speak, but why take the risk?
3. The Human Resources Department could be making better use of their time by doing what they do best and letting the Third Party Recruiter do what he or she does best.
4. The hiring manager, without knowing it, could be settling for the second, third, or fourth best candidate because the HR Department did not present the best candidate to the hiring manager in order to save the recuiting fee.
5. Hiring a critical employee might be delayed and untold profits lost while the search for a “free candidate” continues.
6. Running advertisements in newspapers and on job boards is not cheap and hiring people to sort through hundreds of resumes is even more expensive.
My point of this is that if you really feel that you do not need a third party recruiter’s help with a job search, don’t hire them. The main thing third party recruiters have to offer is their time and expertise. If they are not spending their time well they are not making money. If third party recruiters are not making money they will soon be out of business. If third party recruiters all go out of business where will the corporate world be? Maybe I don’t want to go there but you get the general idea.