When More is Less

The default way of thinking is often that “This is going to be tough position for us to fill, so let’s call three or four recruiters. Whoever comes up with the candidate, we’ll be happy to pay.” If you take this approach, however, here’s what you can expect.

Your brand and attractiveness is diminished. You want to maintain a sense of exclusivity about the position, and about why your practice is a good place to come to work. When quality candidates continue to be contacted by multiple recruiters about your position, it only cheapens you in their eyes.

You can seem desperate. When BV professionals continue to receive calls from multiple recruiters over an extended period of time, they begin to wonder why you can’t seem to fill this position and will assume something is wrong. This perspective can, in turn, deflate any interest that individual might have had in talking with you about the opportunity.

You get sub-par performance. If a recruiter begins to source candidates, only to discover that two out of every three potential candidates have already heard from someone else about this opportunity, that recruiter quickly loses interest. The level of commitment and intensity drops. You may think that recruiter is still working hard on your behalf, and wonder why you’re not getting the results you anticipated.

You open yourself to headaches that you don’t need. Not all recruiters operate with the same set of ethics about how they do their work. You can find yourself wasting time refereeing battles between recruiters when all you wanted to do was hire a quality professional.

This is why BV practices will offer exclusivity to a single recruiter and will give retainers, or partial retainers, to recruiters they have confidence in.