Why the best candidate is the end that justifies the means

There are a number of business leaders who read Magical Penny. Having a business is a great way to become financially empowered. However, your business is only as good as the people in it. You need to recruit the best, and often-times it makes sense to get help to do this.

However, the debate about the cost of recruitment services continues to dominate headlines. What I wonder is whether we should really be jumping on the bandwagon, or perhaps we should take a closer look into why recruitment costs what it does and its values to businesses.

I want to take a closer look at the four key things that recruiters do to create a recruitment strategy that internal departments cannot. In short a recruiter’s role is to match the right candidate to a specific job and company, as and when it’s needed. Financially making the right match at the right time can be a great asset to a business, however making the wrong match can cost a lot of money.

Here are the four areas in which recruiters can excel.

1. Connections

Often recruiters are seen as relationship builders. The nature of their role and sector means that over time they build up a strong network and knowledge of people and connections. These include candidates, clients and hidden ‘passive’ candidates. The community of people they get to know sets them at much more of an advantage in comparison to those who work in house like hiring managers or in HR.

2. Time

What people often forget when judging recruitment costs is that they dedicate their entire job to finding candidates. The entire reason why employers choose to use a recruitment agency is because they themselves don’t have the time to actively recruit. So not only does a recruiter’s capacity to focus their work allow them to find candidates and clients, they also free hiring managers and employers from doing so.

3. Screening

Recruiters are involved throughout the screening process, so that means they source and handle applications, they also screen and interview candidates at preliminary stages. This means that a great amount of time is saved for the employer and guarantees only the best, well-suited candidates come into contact with them later on in the process.

4. Research

And finally, research. It would be a perfect world should the desired candidate come to you each time you had a position to fill. That would make life and your job that much easier, but unfortunately we all know it doesn’t work like that. Finding the right candidate takes time and a lot of research. Even once candidates have been found, there are a range of other checks to run through. And this does not all happen overnight!

So with that said it may seem clearer why recruitment costs what it does. Each of these areas requires a lot of time and attention and therefore contributes to the overall price.

What I would suggest is that the means of recruitment do justify the ends, almost every time. Yes there will be instances where the candidate match isn’t the right one, and yes this can cost money. However more often than not recruiters are experts in this industry and more matches are made than not.

Take Harriet Green when she took on the role as CEO of Thomas Cook. The company recruited her via an agency even though they were verging on bankruptcy. Two years down the line and she had turned around the company’s fortunes. Upon her decision to depart in 2014 the company’s share value fell by £400m overnight.

Although Thomas Cook spent on recruitment costs when they almost had no money, you can see that these costs were the means that justified the ends that essentially saved the company from bankruptcy. This was because Harriet Green was the right candidate match.

So maybe we underestimate recruitment agencies and their ability and efforts to actually provide something in return that is worth much more.

So if you were put off by recruitment agencies, maybe you should rethink, and give them a shot. After all, they are the experts that could have a great impact on your business. Take Simplicity in Business, head to their site to view their expertise and see how they could offer you a solution today.