The most frequent complaints from Talent Acquisition Managers and Hiring Managers concern the accountability of their recruiter.
Clients have told us that their worst nightmare is having to sift through piles of barely-suitable CVs from multiple recruitment agencies, only to find that the initial flurry of CVs turns into radio silence in the following months. The ‘spaghetti method’ of throwing CVs at the wall and hoping something sticks is not productive, nor is it cost-effective.
Every organisation deserves better service than this. Firstly, recruiters have been engaged for a purpose, and failing to deliver is quite simply a waste of time for both parties. Secondly, every business relies on its people. Without staff of a reliable quality, a business will not achieve its full potential. We believe that it’s a recruiter’s responsibility to bear this in mind when they accept a commission, and that clients should demand more than the industry standard they currently receive.
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There are several reasons why this half-hearted type of recruitment practice refuses to die, but we believe that lack of accountability through contingency is the main one. Recruiters know they’re competing against other agencies to fill a role, and they don’t get paid unless their candidate succeeds. Turning the process into a race with only one winner means that quality can often be sacrificed for speed. What’s more, low-hanging fruit will naturally be more attractive to contingency recruiters, meaning that hard-to-fill roles can lie empty for far longer than necessary.
At Solutions Driven, we do things differently. By operating on an exclusive basis, we immediately become accountable for filling each role we take on. Our clients can track our progress throughout the vacancy and can gain from the process itself by receiving informative updates and feedback. Clients can communicate clearly and frequently with their recruiter, meaning there’s no misalignment over briefs and both parties are on the same page from the off.
Watch CEO Gavin Speirs explain why accountability is such a huge part of Solution Driven’s identity, or read the full transcript below.
Accountability in recruitment is so important because it’s not the norm. The majority of recruitment companies don’t like to take accountability, i.e. be measured for the success of an outcome, whereas at Solutions Driven, we actually thrive on clients measuring us and then rewarding success on the back of that.
I don’t believe all recruiters are accountable for the candidates they source. I think it’s a sector where recruiters enjoy submitting candidates, and then passing accountability to the hiring team or the client. For us, that accountability is jointly owned throughout the process.
I think a lack of accountability produces a few different outcomes. One, the recruiter blames the hiring manager for lack of success and vice versa. Two, it stimulates a situation where there’s not as much focus on quality and measurability, because you’re trying to get the best candidate as quickly or quicker than any other provider. For me that doesn’t set up a process to be successful.
I think hiring managers and clients will benefit from having accountable recruiters primarily because then don’t then have to deal with ten or eleven different phone calls at any one time, and secondly because they can put their trust in a partner to say ‘I believe this partner is going to deliver X number of candidates on Y day’, and then measure that partner against this. I believe this drives the right type of relationship.
For me, Solutions Driven are different when it comes to accountability because of how transparent we are with the milestones that we set. At the start of any project or assignment with a client we will agree the mutual objectives during that process so that we can both hold each other accountable, but also so that there’s transparency on where we are in the project and so we’re clear on what the client is expecting us to deliver.
I think contingency recruitment should become a thing of the past because there are too many companies making ‘easy money’, so to speak, in a very non-measured and undemanding environment. I think it should be that whatever partner you chose, you should be exclusive with that partner for that particular project. If you’re not happy with the outcome, you should change it, but four or five partners doesn’t bring four or five times the chance of success.
Contact us today to see how doing recruitment differently could benefit your organisation.
