Get the best results from your recruiter

By Simon Speak, director and finance recruiter, AFR Consulting.

Working with a recruitment specialist can be a great way to save time and improve your chances of success when hiring new employees.

The key to getting value for money from your agency is to build up a trusting relationship. And as one of Lancashire’s longest standing financial recruitment specialists, we’d like to offer a few tips on achieving this:

Take time at the start of the process to define a clear brief, and allow the recruiter to visit or speak with the hiring manager so that they can better understand the role.

Tap into a sector specialist’s knowledge of salaries and job descriptions. They often have the best access to active and passive job seekers in your industry, too.

Negotiate your rates at the start of the process. If you agree a period of exclusivity, you may get a discount.

Clarify the rebate and replacement policy, ensuring you can opt-out if your agency is unable to find a replacement in the agreed time frame.

If you employ multiple agencies, don’t make speed a point of competition. You’ll only get badly briefed candidates. Decide a process for submitting CVs to avoid duplicates.

Trust your recruiter. If a CV doesn’t look like a good fit, ask why it was submitted. In this business we’re judged on our results, so there’s always a reason a candidate was put forward. Investing time in building a relationship with your recruiter pays dividends in the long term. Many of our clients now don’t even need to read CVs before we arrange interviews because they trust our judgement to find the correct match.