I was sat in a coffee shop over the weekend and overheard two friends talking about cars.
One was exalting the virtues of his lovely German saloon, with leather interior, cruise control, faultless driving experience,etc. His friend was also exalting how cheap his car cost to buy and run, the low “upfront cost”, low cost for spare parts, servicing, etc.
Although the conversation was about cars – the two friends were coming from opposite ends of the scale in terms of car needs and wants. Kind of similar to comparing apples & pears.
This set me thinking about clients “buying” recruitment services and their wants & needs; be it “Transactional” or “Value-add”.
Interviews aren’t a scary experience if you focus on some simple preparation. At Wynne Consulting we have many years’ experience of helping high quality people to be successful at interview, so here are a few easy tips to help you deliver the perfect interview:
Like most companies in your sector. Are you struggling to recruit high quality people?
The single biggest reason clients use Wynne Consulting is our ability to find people that aren’t on the “Open Job Market”. That means we find the best people in your market sector that aren’t applying for Job Advertisements, talking to Recruitment Agencies or using CV Websites.
Growth in permanent staff salaries are also growing at their highest rate since before the COVID pandemic started in 2020.
There are numerous times in life when ‘more’ is better; More space, bigger car, more money. So doesn’t it make sense to use a multi-recruiter strategy to fill your roles? Surely more agencies would equal more candidates; and subsequently a better spread of talent to fill your role. The multi agency approach makes some sense from a client perspective, but it’s one of the biggest mistakes in recruitment strategy that we see clients make.
Let me explain…
During a multi agency search, consultants recognise that after considerable work, there’s a strong chance the selected candidate for the position could come from another agency or the client finding someone direct. As a result, this forces recruiters to invest very little work into this type of search. Experienced consultants will skim for candidates who are on the market, send a shortlist and move on to retained and exclusive work; And trust me, this is the smart thing to do, having another candidate get the position after 10 hours of search work is hugely demoralising!
But why is this an issue for you? You’ve placed the role with a multi agency search; and besides, aren’t all recruiters fishing from the same candidate pool? Surely more ‘fishermen’ equals more fish!? But in reality, this is not how recruitment works…
In reality the candidate pool should be seen as more of an iceberg, with 80% of candidates lying ‘under the surface’; these candidates are not actively on the market, won’t reply to your job adverts and won’t have their CV on popular job hunting websites. They require labour intensive methods to properly source, from traditional headhunting to referrals. Most consultants won’t commit time to this form of search when competing against several agencies. So the chances are, if you’re using a multi agency approach, all agencies you’re currently using are only accessing the same 20% of visible candidates.
But let’s play devil’s advocate and say you happen to find the perfect fit. Who cares about the candidates you missed?
But think about it. You’re recruiting from a limited pool of active candidates, while your competitors are accessing the full breadth of talent available. Over a 5 to 10 year period, who is likely to have the stronger team?
Our successful clients know that you can’t build an exceptional team with a limited view of available talent, especially in a niche market . They always opt for an exclusive or retained project with a specialist agency who understands their industry.
One of the biggest problem companies face is how to recruit high quality people in today’s competitive talent environment. We call them the “Hidden Elite”
The major issue is that the vast majority of high performing people don’t ever look for a job on the “open market”, so don’t talk to recruitment agencies, respond to job adverts and place their CV’s on CV Websites.
So how do companies get hold of these people to have an opportunity to recruit them? This diagram gives an accurate breakdown of a typical company of 100 people:
As a headhunt search company we are in business to help clients find the high calibre people they need to be successful.
We find people by identifying and then headhunting target individuals who we believe have the right skills and attributes that we are looking for. That’s great – but when a headhunter contacts you, what is it really like?
As a rule of thumb, we will firstly call the individual and identify that it is in fact them speaking (and not their manager who’s answered their line); then we will make them aware that we are a headhunting organisation and that we would like to have a conversation with them about an career opportunity. We’ll ask “is it a convenient time to talk?”
If you resign your job, and your existing employer offers you a better package or a different job to stay; this is called a Counter-Offer. If you are thinking about accepting a counter offer to stay in a job when you’ve already resigned, or you’re thinking of using a potential employer’s job offer to get your current company to pay you more money read on.
We have over 200 cumulative years of experience at Wynne Consulting and we are regularly faced with these situations.
In the vast majority of situations, using another job offer as a bargaining chip to get more money may be tempting, but it usually ends badly. If you want a salary increase/promotion, then negotiate it on your own merits; or prepare to move jobs.
Whenever we broach this subject, we always get feedback along the lines of “You’re a recruiter, it’s in your personal interests to dissuade candidates from accepting counter-offers as you will lose your fee”. This maybe the case with other recruiters, but for us this is not the case and is missing the point.
I was chatting to my father over the weekend about his experiences of job “interviews” in the 1960’s when he first left college. Morose interviewers firing open questions over an imposing oak desk whilst portraying the demeanor of a disinterested headmaster thinking “why on earth should I bother giving you a job?”.
This kind of arrogant interview style was commonplace where there is a rich choice of candidates to employ; where jobs are few and interviewees are plentiful.
Fast-forward to 2023 and the vast majority of the market sectors we operate in genuinely struggle to identify and recruit the top talent in their sector. A shortage of highly skilled people coupled with an improving economy and falling unemployment makes the battle for talent even more intense.
One of the biggest decisions many professionals take in their career is not just whether to take that great job opportunity, but is it the right thing to relocate you & your family lock, stock & barrel to the other part of the country (or continent!) to take on that new job challenge. Here’s the view of top UK headhunter Wynne Consulting.
“On one side – limiting career progression to the commuting distance from your home can be very restrictive to your career in the long-term; whereas a full job relocation often means leaving behind your friends, family and the standard of living you’re accustomed to (whether that’s a good thing or not!). Relocation is a massive step to take but for the brave it significantly increases the scope and volume of job opportunities available.
As a specialist search recruiter we are continually asked by clients to recruit highly skilled people with specialist skill-sets throughout the UK and Europe.
The nature of the high technology marketplace is that individual expertise and a collective capability of your people to deliver top quality solutions are the fundamental strengths of all successful businesses.
The critical part of that process is a companies’ ability to hire and retain top quality talent from a competitive marketplace. The other companies that you compete with are all looking to hire the same people so your ability to identify and hire the people you need often is the key difference between success and failure.
