Are you Hiring? How to get more from your recruitment partner…
Sometimes, recruitment is seen as one dimensional – sourcing CVs to fill a given role. This is a transactional model that is fast becoming redundant and is most definitely outdated already.
Undoubtedly, as a recruitment consultancy, our main ‘business’ is to source suitable and qualified candidates but where does that start and end?
Hiring Cycle
In an ideal world, it’s fairly straight forward but all of the waypoints are littered with potential pitfalls and hazards and a good recruitment consultancy can help you to avoid these.
Identify a need
Things are on the up in Finance and FinTech. Recruitment needs are often to do with business growth but can also come from covering temporary leave, backfilling a leaver or replacing someone who has not worked out.
The temptation is almost always to replace like for like but this is sometimes not the best approach. Depending on your particular circumstances, this may be one of the first pitfalls to avoid.
How can we help?
We are recruiting all day every day. That means engaging with your peers and those in different industries and verticals. We work with small firms right through to MNCs and we have often worked in similar roles or hired into these areas ourselves.
Talking to us about the need in conjunction with others in the business, may open your eyes to a different approach. It will absolutely give you a good picture of where the market is and what skills are available. We will also be able to advise you on compensation and trends in this. A good recruiter will have real time market knowledge. From our experience, benchmarking in other ways can very often result in data that lags the market and is therefore inaccurate.
Choose Sourcing Channels
An assumption that is sometimes made is that recruitment consultancies are often only happy to help if there is a potential fee involved. We have a real appreciation that our clients will want to or be very capable of sourcing directly or through internal referrals or their own network. This should not preclude you from getting advice from a trusted recruitment partner. Choosing the right sourcing channels is an absolutely critical step in the hiring process.
How can we help?
Again, we are experienced in sourcing and active every day. Talk to us about your strategy and we can help and clearly supplement your own sourcing channels if needed.
We would always suggest looking at a couple of factors:
- What is the time sensitivity of the hire? If you are hiring to cover a short / medium term absence or replace someone who is leaving, a handover period may be critical. You need to use a recruitment mix that will deliver what you need quickly.
- Is this a revenue generating or revenue enabling role? Revenue generating roles should be seen as a longer-term hire with finding the best available being priority. Often this means employing a full sourcing strategy using all channels. Revenue enabling roles are typically a little more straight forward to fill and often more of a volume hire requiring a different approach.
- Is it a one off or likely to be recurring? Depending on the role and scale of firm, you may have regularly recurring hires that require a similar profile. Again, a different approach and requires employing a long term and targeted strategy as well as elements of specific branding and content for that role.
- New team or existing? Often new teams require a different skill set to existing teams and means that you will be looking for a different profile. Different profiles require (most of the time) different sourcing strategies
Sourcing CVs
Using the correct channels is important. Technology candidates are found in different ways to finance candidates for example. Ploughing money and time into the wrong methods will yield a poor return and will lead to low quality longlists which do not accurately reflect the talent available.
Aside from just finding candidates, you need to be able to successfully convert them to candidates. Having a good understanding of the market and techniques to do this, are key.
How can we help?
We could quite easily write pages on sourcing and its subtleties depending on your requirements! With new products and techniques coming out all the time, it is very much a movable feast which creates opportunity but challenges at the same time.
Talking to us about the actual sourcing process, whether we are directly involved or not, will help you at the outset to identify where to spend the most time. Proactively sourcing through LinkedIn, your own database or any of the number of external databases or other sources, takes up time. You need to plan your search appropriately. Spending a bit of time at the outset will result in better return on time and deliver better longlists.
We can also advise you on how you actually approach people – particularly when proactively sourcing rather than relying on advertising, the approach and conversation to candidate is becoming increasingly important and difficult. For you, approaching directly from a potential employer, this is often the first point of contact and, therefore, first impression a potential candidate will get. It’s a bit cliché but it’s true – you only get one chance to make a first impression.
Interview Suitable Candidates
The interview process, which has hopefully happened quite quickly from sourcing CVs, is a critical part of the hiring process. Bringing people forward to interview is as important as communicating with those not being selected. Also, the interview process itself will make a big difference.
How can we help?
Interviews and interview formats / stages are evolving. We find that a lot of clients are doing an initial phone / Skype screen now before moving to an office interview (often a final stage). Candidates do struggle to get out of the office sometimes so running a full process over a couple of hours is often preferred to two or three different stages.
We are seeing the introduction of tests and presentations becoming more and more common also but it is something that we are happy to advise on and will always be specific to ad hoc roles. Volume hiring can be a little more challenging and we are seeing interview days being used more often, particularly for more junior roles.
Make an Offer
So, you have sourced correctly, interviewed a good shortlist and have a preferred candidate. Now it’s just a case of offering and picking a start date? If only it was that straight forward!
The offer is as important as every other stage. It is what everyone is aiming toward on both sides and it is the moment of truth…
Getting an offer wrong can, at a minimum, leave a bad taste in the mouth of a potential candidate and at worst, damage your own reputation and employer brand while eliminating someone you wanted from the process.
How can we help?
Accurately determining a salary range for a particular role is important but how it is delivered is also something that can make or break an offer.
Depending on the role, level and background of the candidate, we can often advise on not just the number (salary) but additional considerations. Of course, if we are working directly with you and are representing the candidate, we can be much more accurate about where an offer needs to be to secure the candidate at a level that both you and they are happy at.
For longer term considerations around overall comp packages, again, we are well positioned to offer advice and market trends.
Onboard new Hire
Once the offer is accepted, the final stage of the hiring process begins. This typically is around drawing up a contract and start date (with all of the lovely aspects of internal set up involved!). Making sure someone is really looking forward to joining and hitting their first day full of energy and enthusiasm does mean a little out of box thinking!
How can we help?
Again, it’s advice. We see new things in the market all the time and are regularly in touch with candidates who are seeing out notice etc. so understand their mindset.
We would always recommend, where possible, that there is not a void of nothingness between the contract being returned and the start date. More should be done and we are seeing things like lunches and team introductions being done more often as well as really interesting consumable content. All of these things are designed to ensure that good feeling after deciding to move is maintained and solidified right up to Day 1.
In Summary
The hiring cycle is changing constantly and employers need to keep up with these changes. Finding, hiring and retaining the best talent is a constant struggle but getting it right at the hiring stage goes a long way to the longer-term success of any company.
Changes in recruitment have meant that recruitment consultancies have had to change. TTR are committed to adding value where possible to all of our clients across FinTech and Finance and are delighted to have had the opportunity to do so with high growth FinTech firms and established brands in Finance looking to refresh in this area.
We don’t believe it is enough to just source CVs anymore and understand how the market has changed and will continue to.
If you would like to discuss what we do, how we can help or what to discuss anything in this blog, please don’t hesitate to reach out.