5 Questions to Ask Your Recruiting Firm
And the Answers You Want to Hear
Whether you’re looking for a new recruiting firm or want to do a “gut check” with your current one, it’s important to understand where a firm stands on its approach to partnering with your business—especially in light of current market conditions, hiring challenges, and skills shortages.
Below are the five questions to ask to ensure you’re getting the best recruiting outcome for your organization.
1) How do you ensure each client receives a personalized approach?
Your recruiting firm’s response sheds light on whether they understand your business, its culture, and the jobs you need filled require much more than a “one-size-fits-all” approach.
- Research every company before work begins, understanding their business model, revenue drivers, environment, culture, and operating reality—even visit onsite.
- Help hiring managers understand technical skill sets and refine descriptions if their skill expectations are too high or low for a given position.
- Uncover resume inconsistencies to ensure fewer, but better, matches vs. taking resumes at face value.
- Understand the KPIs that define success in every role and push for intake calls with every manager, asking tough questions and pointing out where candidates fall short.
2) Most recruitment firms pull from the same candidate pool—how do you make sure clients get the best options?
If your firm can claim the following, you have a good chance of getting quality submissions.
- Vet candidates and complete reference checks before interviews take place, ensuring the available pool is smaller and populated with higher quality, more diverse options.
- Interview and work with tens of thousands of candidates, developing a keen eye for best-fit talent and curating a roster of hand-picked candidates for every job type.
- Source beyond the cookie cutter by actively engaging in local communities and networking to uncover unique candidates not found via traditional outreach.
- Work where clients work—recruiters are in your city and understand your target market.
- Engage with consultants on a personal level, so you become the firm they prefer to work with—creating access to candidates not found everywhere else.
Jeffrey Anderson, IntePros Managing Director, adds, “How you treat consultants matters. On the candidate end, it can be frustrating when someone you partner with to find work goes dark. Communication along every touchpoint is crucial so every candidate understands how much they are valued.”
3) How do you vet a candidate to avoid “faux talent” and misrepresented skills?
Your time and money are valuable. Make sure your firm is working hard not to waste either one.
- Develop a proven, repeatable candidate vetting process across the organization based on experience and learnings refined over decades.
- Conduct reference checks that go beyond the names listed on a resume—verify the smallest details about work and personal history, skill level, and competency.
Chris Kovalcik, Market Expansion Executive at IntePros, further explains, “Situational behavioral questions like ‘Describe to me the role you’ve played in completing this key project and who you worked with to achieve that’’ are important in validating the accuracy and depth of candidate work experience.”
- Employ dedicated AI tools and tech as a second layer of review to help further uncover inconsistencies and refine candidate recommendations.
- Investigate thoroughly: check that licenses align with work experience, reach out to past coworkers, and ask pointed questions to uncover if someone is only looking for leverage to negotiate a raise at a current job.
- Prioritize meeting candidates face-to-face for roles that are worked in person.
4) What steps do you take to ensure I’m getting quality candidates?
If your recruiting firm submits high volume fast, they’re likely recycling candidates from other searches and not tailoring submissions to your needs.
- Clarify job descriptions and carefully vet potential candidates to ensure only closely aligned matches are presented.
- Discuss each role with candidates before submitting them, to understand their needs. E.g., must be done by 5pm, live too far for onsite work, weekends are off limits.
- Meet with the hiring manager upfront to truly understand what a role entails, so the job write-up and candidate match are closely aligned based on real skills and real needs.
- Enquire about a rejected candidate before submitting a new one to ensure rejection doesn’t happen again.
Chris Kovalcik also points out, “You have to put in the work to understand specifically what a hiring manager is looking for, beyond what’s captured in the job description, which is essentially a wish list.”
- Understand that job requirements evolve during the hiring process and work in lockstep with hiring managers to determine if and when it’s appropriate to update them.
5) What do you do to reduce attrition and increase onsite consultant retention?
There will always be attrition. Avoidable attrition is what your recruiting firm must focus on.
- Get it right and risk losing submissions by working hard to uncover red flags that could lead to turnover. Successful placements are measured by how consultants complete the assignment, not simply by them starting the role.
Jeffrey Anderson elaborates, “As a firm, if you don’t proactively point out perceived candidate weaknesses from the get-go, weeks or months down the road it will bubble up and cause issues once that candidate is placed.”
- Identify and proactively address travel requirements or pay scale before day one. If there’s a disconnect, let the hiring manager know. Especially if the candidate previously earned more or if the listed pay is under the going rate.
- Investigate why a role has been open too long—ask hiring managers to share why people are leaving in order to address it and improve retention going forward.
- Recommend bridging the gap between consultants and full-time employees (FTE). The more a consultant feels valued and is treated as an FTE, the more likely they are to stay.
Finding the right recruiting firm can take time. We’re here to help.
If you have any questions about our philosophy—or if you’d like to meet to talk about your recruiting needs—please contact us anytime. We’d love to connect.
