By Kelly Nolan, managing director of KMN Consult
When it comes to finding the best talent, companies are finding the 2023 job market to be ultra-competitive. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has predicted that up to one fifth of the UK workforce will look for a new position this year, so not only is there a bigger pool of candidates to choose from, companies are also hit with the headache of ensuring successful talent retention.
Retention begins with successful recruiting. By successful I don’t just mean filling the position, I mean actively finding the best talent for that specific role, someone that fits with a company’s culture and values and so therefore will stay the course and help the business to flourish. It all comes down to finding the perfect fit.
That’s why businesses who have a retained recruitment specialist (sometimes also known as a head-hunter) on their books are in the best position to attract and retain the right candidates.
For retained recruitment the specialist works on a scheduled and exclusive basis, this means that only they will work on the company’s required search.
The other method that firms sometimes use to fill positions is contingency recruiting, which is where the agency or recruiter only gets paid if a candidate that they have found is hired by the organisation.
Some businesses believe that if they put the same role out to four different recruitment agencies then they stand a better chance of finding the right candidate. But in reality, the success of casting the net wider is a myth and it actually ends up diluting the process. Put yourself in the position of the candidate looking for work who gets a call from four different agencies pitching for the same role. What perception does that give of the hiring company?
I’m a recruitment professional with over 16 years’ expertise in helping all sizes of business to find the best talent. I always advise that engaging in retained recruitment brings the best dividends. This is why:
Five benefits to businesses of retaining a recruitment specialist:
- A retained, trusted recruitment partner has in-depth knowledge of the industry in question, has represented the sector well, knows how it operates and also many of the people in it. The specialist will fully understand the hiring company and its ethos. This saves time for the company in the long run because the brief does not have to be explained many times to multiple recruiters.
- Retained search focuses on finding quality candidates, not amassing a large quantity of CVs. Successful retained recruitment specialists will look at promising candidates who are already employed and may not even be actively looking for their next career move. This is where the retained recruitment specialist really comes into their own, using their expertise in the market to find the candidate with the exact skill set and personality for the available role.
- A successful retained recruitment specialist will dig deeper than what is in the job profile and the initial brief. It’s not just about what’s in a candidate’s CV either, it’s about doing the right research and due diligence on a potential candidate and coupling this with an understanding of the culture of the company to determine if the person should be put forward for interview.
- With KMN Consult you can have confidence that candidates have been fully vetted through background and reference checks giving clients peace of mind that only genuinely qualified candidates have been presented
- When the right candidate is placed with the right company, concerns about talent retention also subside, because the person is less likely to want to move on, having been placed in the perfect role for them.
Retaining a recruitment partner leads to better talent acquisition and a more structured process. It is a partnership of trust between the business and the recruiter.
To find out more about how retained recruitment can help your business find the best talent, please contact me here https://kmnconsult.co.uk/contact/
