With over 20 years in the HR and recruitment industry, Martin Wainman, Managing Director at Omni, has been a recruiter, a hiring manager and a candidate, with varying results! He now leads the Omni business which acts as the link between hiring managers and recruiters and, now more than ever, he is seeing organisations that are not getting the best from their recruitment providers. Here’s Martins advice on how to get the best from your recruiter…

Are all recruiters rubbish?

The acquisition of talent is often the number one priority within a business. And so it should be. With a ‘bad’ hire estimated to cost a company around £30,000, as well as the extra time taken to bring a new employee to optimum productivity – not hiring the right person first time, undoubtedly, has a major impact on a business.

Excellent recruitment has never been so important and expectations from internal stakeholders and candidates have never been so high. So what’s missing? How can we get the best from recruiters?

The missing link

There is so much information available exploring the hiring manager experience and the candidate experience with regards to the recruitment process; is the missing link the ‘recruiter’ experience?

Recruiters are under understandable pressure to secure the best talent as quickly as possible and at the least cost, but are they being given the right tools to do this effectively? We often hear about out-of-date job descriptions and inadequate competency frameworks from which to recruit from. Given poor tools, finding and engaging the best candidates in short timeframes is without doubt a recipe for a failed recruitment process.

Four ways you can the very best service from your recruiter…
  • Modern recruitment is as much about attitudes and behaviours as it is skills and competencies, so organisations need to give recruiters greater insight into their culture and values, as well as simply the roles they’re recruiting for. To this end, ensuring good communication between hiring managers and recruiters is absolutely key.
  • Lowest-cost, fastest-speed recruitment won’t necessarily result in the best quality hires. Give your recruiters more time and space to do the job they’re trained to do.
  • Ask your hiring managers: when did you last spend meaningful time with your recruiter? Face-to-face meetings with recruiters are so important – it gives them a chance to understand you, the business objectives and your company culture.
  • Be as specific as possible in job descriptions given to recruiters. A “this will do” attitude around competency measures will never get you the best possible candidate match! Role profiles and job descriptions just won’t fit the bill these days – it’s much more about matching a whole person – their temperament, attitude and behaviour as well as their skills – to a role.

Improve the recruiter experience and get better hires, faster.

The moral of the story is a better recruiter experience equals a better candidate experience, improved hires and happier managers!


How can Omni help?

We change the way organisations resource for the better.

Omni RMS is an outsourcing and recruitment transformation specialist, providing strategic consultancy, HR & recruitment training and talent solutions to organisations across both public and private sectors with award winning results.

Contact us to see how we can transform the way you resource for the better.