Choosing the right recruitment partner, who has the ability to identify those key individuals, can be critical to business success. Businesses need to generate positive messages to attract and open conversations with these top performers.
Developing a close relationship with the right and commitment to the point of advocacy, where your chosen recruiter has real belief in your organization, what it stands for, its culture, ethos and values, arm them with the knowledge they need to sell your brand. This is the first step to enable a good recruiter to identify and attract the most talented candidates and open those lines of communication with the people your business needs.
The characteristics to look for when selecting a recruitment partner begin with reputation, a good track record and outstanding reputation in the marketplace for recruiting high quality candidates at whatever level you may require to speak for yourself. The following characteristics must be considered before choosing the best recruitment partner for your organization:
- Staffing of your HR Partner
- Recruitment-Selection ratio (%)
- Spread and strength
- Fight Against Exploitation
- Additional Value
STAFFING OF YOUR HR PARTNER
One of the best characteristics in finding a right Recruitment Partner is their staff. Their staff members may be expertise in their respective fields like human resources, administrative fields, medical staffing, and office technology staffing. But, we are here to get the best quality talent available for your business success. So, the staff must be in accordance with your requirement only.
- Right kind of staff for the right kind of requirement: Until and unless, your HR partner does not have the right kind of staff, you cannot get the most suitable candidate for your requirement. For example, unless your partner employs technical staff, engineers and foremen, they will not be able to source technical candidates for you. They cannot even differentiate between the skilled and unskilled candidates. They are in the “Pushing business”, i.e. to push resume via email and candidate numbers when you come for the interview. So, be sure that your HR Partner gives a practical test to each candidate before presenting him or her to you as per the test designed by you only.
- On Site testing upon Arrival: It must be ensured from your partner side that each candidate must be tested after reaching the site. The test, designed by you, will reveal which recruitment agency is providing you higher quality of candidates. Once the candidate starts working at the site, it is difficult to identify which HR agency a worker comes from. Also, after the on-site test, you must provide the appropriate feedback to your partner so that they can provide you better candidates in the future.
- Regular Audit Update: Audit must be held in regular intervals to ensure that the information provided by the agency is accurate and update.
RECRUITMENT – SELECTION RATIO
Another characteristic in selecting a right recruitment partner is their recruitment-selection ratio. The recruitment selection ratio must be as small as possible for a successful selection trip. If your HR partner is providing you the maximum selection ratio of quality candidates against your requirement, it means you have selected the right HR partner for your business. To evaluate their performance, you need to monitor their activity by following process:
- Track of each selection trip: You must keep track of each selection trip. For example, if you visit your partner for recruiting 100 candidates, and our partner present 300 candidates but you have selected only 40 candidate, then your trip was a complete failure. This means your partner is not in the recruitment industry. They are in the Pushing Industry and hence, providing you with more and more quantity candidates in appropriate numbers.
- Track of closing percentage of each trip: You must keep track of the closing percentage of each recruitment trip taken by you.
SPREAD AND STRENGTH
You must select the HR partner if they have maximum market presence and possess maximum market strength among the other partners. If they have maximum market share, they will be more capable to provide you with the maximum number of quality candidate. The spread and strength of a right recruitment partner must be determined by the following factors:
- Size of India: The population of India is 1.5 times of the population of Europe. For people with limited income, traveling from one part of the country to the other can take more than 4 days. People in the northern part of India are extremely different from the southern part. They have different sets of culture, language and food. Same differences exist in the east and the west parts. So, if your HR partner has maximum market spread and strength, they must be capable to prepare the candidates about the culture, language and other amenities of the location they are located.
- Number of locations: The best recruitment partners must have offices or branch in minimum 4 locations in different parts of the country. It helps them to know about culture and language of different areas and help them to prepare the candidate more perfectly. It helps them in the following areas:
- This would allow them to access different parts of India easily, without making people travel for 4 days to get a job (in which case, most candidates will not be interested).
- If a recruiting partner has one or two offices, they will have no choice but to outsource your business to a “Sub Agent”, which result in exploitation of the candidate.
- With a good spread, your partner will be able to recruit people from all over the country. This will ensure that candidates will not get together and form unions on the site.
FIGHT AGAINST EXPLOITATION
Another most important characteristic that your recruitment partner must possess is Fight against exploitation. A worker without the right quality has no choice but to BUY a job. On the other hand, the quality candidates need not to buy a job. Jobs come automatically to them depending upon their skills, experience and qualification. So, it is the utmost priority that your partner provides you the best quality candidate and hence, must fight against candidates’ exploitation.
Exploitation can be caused if your partner does not have wide spread in the market and using sub-agents for finding the candidates. In this case, the candidate has to pay the charges to your partner as well as the sub agent as the fees, which leads to exploitation to the candidate and loss of money. Also, it is not confirmed that you are getting the quality candidate.
The one way to judge whether your partner is providing the quality candidate is that each worker that reaches your site must be questioned about the amount of the money they have paid. This is the best way to judge the recruitment partner’s level of seriousness towards fighting exploitation.
We have a network of 17 offices which makes our company more expensive, less profitable but still, we are able to fight against exploitation as about 95% of our candidates do not come from sub agents.
ADDITIONAL VALUE
Staff of your HR partner, recruitment-selection ratio, spread and strength of your partner’s market presence and fight against candidate’s exploitation are the basic characteristic that each HR partner must possessed in order to provide better quality of service. But the best HR partner is one who provides additional value to you in addition to basic services. Here are the few additional values that can help you to judge the best HR partner:
- How to ensure that each candidate is “Site Ready”? To check whether the candidate is “Site ready” or not, you must check that the candidate must know about the basic safety knowledge to prevent from any kind of injury, camp and country knowledge, familiar with new tools and equipment and must be capable to check their own work with minimum guidance or supervision.
- How to ensure that the candidate is productive? The candidate may have the right qualification, experience in the respective field and skills to perform a job but is he productive? You must ensure that the candidate provided by your partner must be productive. For that, each candidate must be provided information on how to become more productive at work and use their skills properly.
- How does your agency check the attitude and aptitude of each candidate that they dispatch? You must be aware that whether your partner is checking the attitude and aptitude of the candidate before dispatching them. Many agencies run 10-15 days skill up-gradation camps where they provide accommodation and food. Attitude and aptitude can only be assessed via constant monitoring. You must know about this skill up-gradation camps that your partner is providing.
I hope the above points give you a clear idea on what you may consider while selecting or re-evaluating your current recruiting agent. Regular audits will ensure that parameters set by you are followed.
Good Luck!
Author: Varun Khosla
MD, Dynamic Staffing Services
