Questions to Ask When Evaluating a Recruitment Partner
By: Stacey McCreery, President & COO
A trusted recruitment partner can serve as an indispensable extension of your HR team. However, not every staffing firm will be the right fit for your organization. If you choose the wrong recruitment firm, you may end up losing money, wasting time, and not meeting your hiring goals.
So, where do you start when evaluating potential recruitment partners? Here are some questions that will help.
1. What is your firm’s specialization? Have you worked with companies in our industry before?
You want to find a recruitment partner that understands the needs, terminology and unique challenges of hiring for the roles for which you will be hiring.
2. What is your process for finding the ideal candidate?
It’s not enough to just post a job opening and hope for the best. You want to find a recruitment partner that can leverage their network and source both active and passive candidates. Your ideal candidate may or may not be actively looking for a new role.
3. How Do You Assess Cultural Fit?
A bad cultural fit can damage team morale and cause high turnover. Your recruitment partner should not only find candidates that have the technical abilities required for the position, but they also need to understand the candidates’ personalities and work styles. And they need to have a good sense of your workplace culture to know if the candidate would be a good fit.
4. How do you measure success? What is your time-to-fill? How about retention rates?
Get an idea of how the firm assesses its achievements. Retention rates will show how on-target their hires have been. Time-to-fill shows how efficient they are. Your recruitment partner should be able to provide specific, measurable examples of success.
5. What is your pricing structure?
You’ll need to understand the financial commitment of partnering with the recruitment firm, including fees, payment schedules, and any replacements guarantees. Make sure there will be no surprise fees later on.
6. How will we work together? What is your process for updates?
Get an idea of what it will be like to work with the recruitment firm. How often will you meet or receive updates? How do they prefer to communicate? This will give you an idea if their process fits in with your processes.
7. Who will I be working with?
Will you be working with one point of contact or multiple different individuals? How experienced is the person or people assigned to your account? Ask for the length of time with the company and in your specific industry.
8. What is your policy on confidentiality?
Confidentiality is key – especially for sensitive or executive roles. You need to ensure the recruitment firm will not put your company’s name or the existence of a high-level opening at risk prematurely.
9. Can you provide references from similar clients?
Gathering information from the recruitment firm is one thing, but hearing straight from other who have worked with them is just as valuable (if not more). A trustworthy recruitment partner should be able to provide several client references with no hesitation.
Finding a long-term recruiting partner
It’s important that the recruitment firm you partner with is thorough, trustworthy and truly cares about your organization beyond simply a transactional arrangement. If you find a recruitment partner that checks these boxes, the results will be better hiring outcomes, reduced time-to-fill, and improved retention.
Stacey McCreery
President and COO
Stacey McCreery is a writer, a speaker, and the founder and COO of ROI Search Group.