Employing a top-notch recruitment consultancy to find you the perfect candidates for your job vacancy is a great first step to finding the right person for the job. But if you want them to do the best job they can, and save you a whole lot of wasted time and money, there are a few things you need to do in order to set them up for success.

One: Provide A Clear Job Description.

A clear job description helps your recruitment consultant find you candidates that exactly match your requirements for the role.

It’s important to clearly and concisely list the skills, knowledge, expertise, experience, and qualifications that the candidate must possess, and which are a ‘nice to have’. When you’re considering this aspect of the job description, think about what the candidate needs in order to do the job, and what isn’t as vital, or can be learned as they go.

Clearly explain the duties and responsibilities the successful candidate will be expected to fulfill. That helps your recruitment consultant to find candidates who have undertaken those duties and responsibilities before. Setting clear expectations means that your recruitment consultant will know exactly who to send you for interview, and it’ll help those candidates better prepare for their interview. All of which saves you the time of interviewing unsuitable candidates.

When you’re creating the job description for the role, it’s best to avoid the trap of just issuing the same job description you’d use for an internal advert. Internal job descriptions tend to be written in a way that only internal candidates will understand. If you want the best external candidates, you need to translate the internal advert into language they’ll understand.

Two: Get Your Timing Right.

Setting and understanding your recruitment timeline is key to getting the right person. It helps your recruitment consultant understand how much time they have, and it helps you to ensure as smooth a transition as possible for your business, and the successful candidate. If there’s someone currently in the role, I’d suggest you start with his or her leaving date and work back. So if they need to serve two months notice, figure out how long a handover you want there to be, and deduct that from the two months. That’s how long you have to find the right person. A good recruitment consultant can work with that, but it doesn’t help to think that there’s loads of time, and then find out that you need someone in a week’s time.

Whatever the timeline, it’s important that you play your part in meeting it. That means coming back quickly with a shortlist of candidates you want to interview, and giving prompt feedback following the interview process. It also means making decisions quickly about who you want to offer the job to, and communicating that to your recruitment consultant. This has another two benefits: it gives the candidates a favourable impression of your firm; and it means you’re less likely to lose your first choice to another job offer.

Three: Help Them Understand The Recruitment Process.

Every company’s recruitment process is different, so it’s important that your recruitment consultant understands what yours entails for each position you want to fulfill.

Help them to understand how many stages there are, and what each stage involves. And give them as much information as you can about what format your interviews will take. The more your recruitment consultant knows about your recruitment process, the better they can prepare the candidates that they send for you to interview.

A good recruitment consultant will spend time with their candidates preparing them for what’s involved, so that they can spend their time with you demonstrating the skills, knowledge, expertise, and experience that you’re looking for, rather than trying to navigate the interview process. This is just another example of how a first-class recruitment consultant helps to save you time, and find you the best person for your vacancy.

Four: Culture Counts.

In order for any candidate to succeed at your company, they need to be a cultural fit. They can look the best on paper, but if they don’t fit into your culture then one of you is going to be looking for them to leave sooner rather than later, and you’ll have to start the whole process all over again.

You can avoid this happening by making sure that you meet with your recruitment consultant. Have them come to your office, and meet some of the staff. Tell them the company history, and where you’re taking the business. And if the successful candidate will be working closely with other people, be open about their personalities. That way your recruitment consultant can find you someone who’s a personality fit as well as a cultural one.

Of course in order for your recruitment consultant to know all this about the people they send to you, they’ll need to have met the candidates beforehand. Not every recruitment agency does this, but the best ones do.

If you’d like to speak to someone who’s spent the last 18 years helping businesses to find ‘the right person for the job’, then please give me a call on 07510 051781 or drop me an email at enquiries@valeco.co.uk for an initial chat about how I can help you. And rest assured, if you want us to work together, not only will I insist on meeting you, I’ll also work with you until we’ve got a job description I can work with, help you work out your timeframe, and every candidate I send you will be a cultural fit for your business.