I don’t need to bother working with a recruiter, you say. I know my experience…
Bryan Finison,
Managing Member Consulting
Tidwell DeWitt, LLC
Birmingham, AL
We’ve all had a client who hands us a financial statement with the expectation that we can just tell him a number that his company is worth. He doesn’t realize how much more he could get if only he let us take a more consultative approach without limiting our scope.
The same is true when it comes to getting the most out of your relationship with a recruiter.
When it comes to hiring, I see my choices as finding a strategic fit vs. looking for a body. Let’s face it – using a recruiter to find a body is an extremely costly proposition. Using a recruiter for the strategic fit is a much more cost-effective approach. In the end, a strategic fit is a better hire. The recruiter’s role becomes one of making sure you only see the ones that are truly qualified for your situation.
It’s important to have the patience and understanding that if you’re not seeing a candidate it’s not because the recruiter isn’t working for you, it’s because he hasn’t found the one that he thinks is worth introducing to you.
One of the things that frustrates me in trying to serve my own client is not being able to get a good inside view of his situation and what he wants to accomplish. I’m just not able to give him my best advice and perspective especially when the purpose of the valuation is for management benchmarking. That’s why I go out of my way to share as much as I can with my recruiter. I want him seeing the whole picure.
That’s not always easy, I have to admit. It can be embarrassing to admit that you have your own internal dysfunctions and bureaucracies. But, the reality is that every company has them. We all have people who don`t see eye-to-eye. We all have our internal resource battles. The fear is that the recruiter will portray that to the candidate, contributing to the sort of negative view that can get in the way of a good hire.
The advantage I’ve found is that the more I share with my recruiter, the better he can use his industry knowledge to guide me, to tell me which battles to fight with the candidate and how to massage the candidate’s view to prep her for potentially difficult issues.
Isn’t it more rewarding to serve a client who truly relies on you? You know – and you know that he knows – that he gets better service that way.
The same is true when you rely on your recruiter.
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Bryan Finison
