A recruiter working on a contingency basis often has to work on 5 or 6 roles to be guaranteed one placement.
Yes, we hear your cries of desperation. This is bleak.
This means an outrageous 80% of your efforts do not result in a fee, and only 20% of your focus is on the job that you will ultimately get paid for. Unfortunately, this means that quality is often compromised. Good candidates may be overlooked, and poor candidates included out of desperation – and if you aren’t slacking on quality, you are most likely totally burnt out and in need of a long overdue holiday.
So, if this is your battlefield, let’s take a look at how you can place yourself in a strategic position to put up a good fight for those elusive fees…
Build that pipeline
Don’t recruit in a reactive way, take a proactive approach by building relationships with candidates who may be perfect for a job down the line. If a hard-to-fill position comes up, you might already know the person for the job. Added bonus – if you have formed a good relationship with a candidate early on, they are more likely to send their job-seeking friends your way.
Understand your candidates
We all know that sinking feeling when the perfect candidate withdraws from the process suddenly. “It was unavoidable…” you tell yourself. But let’s leave the self-pity at the door. If you had built a stronger relationship with your candidate you might have picked up on signals that they were not so reliable. You could have mitigated the risk by lining up another potential candidate (maybe there’s one in that pipeline you should have built…).
Read CVs carefully
Be sure to read CVs carefully as sometimes relevant skills and capabilities can be hidden and scattered within a CV. Obviously it would be much better if candidates could structure their CV in an optimal way, but maybe poor formatting is their only flaw. Don’t throw away the perfect candidate.
Speed up your processes
There are tedious tasks in the recruitment process that can take up too much time. One such unforgiving task is reformatting CVs which can take up to 20 minutes. Cue Allsorter.com… we reduce time-to-hire.
Allsorter.com is an intelligent AI-powered software for reformatting CVs to branded templates. The standardised format will highlight hidden skills, allow for easy comparison and reduce unconscious selection bias, ultimately making you a more efficient recruiter. Plus, with all the extra time you can start working on that pipeline…