Recruiting campaign

Consultants can provide candidate shortlists and offer help with interview techniques

For many IT professionals and organisations, recruitment consultants are a necessarily evil – you might not like using them, but sometimes you don’t have a choice.

‘We tend to ask them to help us with the vacancies we’re struggling with,’ says Deb Self, recruitment manager at educational software and systems specialist RM.

The company uses consultants for fewer than 10 per cent of its recruitment. ‘Essentially, they will have a bigger database than us, but we always hope to find people ourselves,’ she says.

Such an attitude is fairly common, and many firms are suspicious that consultants add only modest value for the fees they charge. Martin Soulsby, senior IT recruitment manager at agency Michael Page, says this state of affairs exists because too many recruiters do too little.

‘If we can’t add value to the recruitment process, then why should a company pay us?’ he says.

‘The IT recruitment industry has a very bad reputation. That’s because there is a very low cost of entry into the marketplace and a lot of companies’ only unique selling point is on price.’

But he maintains that good recruiters do add significant value. ‘We can offer a far greater reach in terms of the pool of talent and we can save clients significant time in terms of shortlisting candidates,’ he says.

‘But we’re certainly not a CV factory. When we deliver people, we ensure those people are right for our clients in terms of their career aspirations and cultural fit.’

Sam Baxendale, managing consultant at IT recruiter Computer People, agrees, and says that a recruitment consultant can help a client in a number of ways.

‘A consultant will have relationships with excellent candidates who might not be actively searching or have their CVs posted online, along with specific knowledge of where to find others with relevant skills and experience,’ he says.

‘The consultant will spend a significant period of time searching for and screening many suitable candidates, dealing with advert response, and may also apply technical testing and specific interview techniques – all prior to providing a shortlist to the client. This will often involve methodically reducing a pool of 200-plus potential candidates down to three highly suitable individuals, something many clients simply do not have the resources to undertake effectively.’

Agencies say they offer candidates the benefits of being able to ascertain what sort of roles would suit them, and can present a number of potential roles, as well as advising on CV presentation and interview techniques. Baxendale says agencies can also help candidates maximise their salary.

‘Candidates may feel uncomfortable asking a potential employer for more money than is being offered. By going through an agent, applicants can be more objective without sounding selfish or greedy,’ he says.

So how do candidates and clients avoid the cowboys and select the right consultants? Baxendale says the reputation of the company the agent works for is crucial.

‘If the agency is large and established, this will normally be as a result of following quality-driven business practices which put the candidate first,’ he says.

‘The culture of the business, good or bad, will inevitably be instilled into the way the consultant operates.’

Beyond that, says Baxendale, it’s about ensuring that the agent is easy to contact, honest, acts on your requirements and demonstrates a good knowledge of your market.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) notes that companies should have a formal resourcing strategy to ensure they make the best use of agencies as part of their overall mix of recruitment methods, which might also include direct advertising, referrals and an increasing variety of online tools and networks at their disposal.

Rebecca Clake, CIPD organisation and resourcing advisor, says the institute conducts an annual survey into companies’ recruitment and retention practices, finding that about three-quarters use agencies to some extent.

‘But only about half have a formal resourcing strategy – and the extent to which you want to use recruitment agencies is something you have to think through as an organisation,’ she says.

‘There are pros and cons and the answer will vary depending on the type of staff you’re looking to recruit. But particularly for larger organisations, it is helpful to have a preferred supplier list. It’s important to invest in these relationships if you want them to work.’

Clake also has some tips on how to select the right agencies.

‘Gather information about the agencies out there: talk to people; use your networks,’ she says. ‘Try to get some feedback about what it’s really like working with them and see if the organisation has some case studies they can share with you. But don’t take anything on face value and always ask them probing questions.’

Organisations that continually report bad experiences with recruiters should be prepared to take some of the blame themselves, says Clake.

‘Our survey found that only 28 per cent of companies had a structured means of evaluating an agency’s performance,’ she says. ‘Yet without doing that, how can you know if an agency is doing a good job or not?’

And the relationship between the internal HR department and the recruitment industry can sometimes be quite fractious, says Clake. Organisations complain, for example, that they have been sent too many inappropriate CVs.

‘At the same time an agency might say a client failed to provide it with a decent brief, so it’s often not as one-sided as it seems,’ she says. ‘A lot of agencies do have really useful specialist expertise that they can share with an organisation, for example the ability to run a large-scale campaign to recruit a specialist role.’

But there are also increasing opportunities to bypass recruitment consultancies – or at least those that do not add any value and do little more than basic CV-matching. Online job boards are one way to reach a wide pool of candidates without going through agencies.

Ray Duggins, managing director at www.theitjobboard.com, says online recruitment is becoming more sophisticated, and that the form of enrolment is particularly established in the IT sector.

‘As the war for talent hots up and employers become savvier, they are using more refined online recruitment tools such as CV databases,’ he says.

‘Candidates are able to leave their CV where recruiting companies can find it, without the need to directly apply for individual jobs.’

But Michael Page’s Soulsby cautions against such an approach, saying the danger here is that a candidate has no control over their CV.

‘Anyone can grab it, cut and paste sections and send it out as their own,’ he says. ‘Also, there’s nothing to stop their current employer going on the site and seeing it, which they may not want.’

Despite such protestations, an increasing number of candidates and employers are choosing to use online tools such as CV databases, which continue to grow in sophistication.

Michelle Flynn, head of recruitment at systems integrator and consultancy Conchango, says that in her experience using a recruitment consultant is no longer the best way to find a job in IT.

‘This is the reason why we do all our recruitment directly,’ she says.

‘Companies have recognised that they now have the ability to contact candidates directly because of recent Web 2.0 advances such as blogs, social networking sites and other user communities.

‘Recent reports that financial services firms are turning down candidates because of information garnered from MySpace, for example, is testament to how big an impact Web 2.0 is having on the recruitment world.’

Such developments are likely to encroach more and more on the lower end of the IT recruitment industry. But that’s probably no bad thing – for as Soulsby concedes, the recruitment industry needs to deliver more of a service to both candidates and clients.

‘Only those organisations that are able to offer a service clients are prepared to pay for deserve to thrive,’ he says.