As a manufacturing or engineering business, what factors should you be taking into consideration when selecting a recruitment partner? Willcox Matthews investigates in this blog article.
It has become commonplace on LinkedIn and professional social media platforms to see hiring managers and candidates alike write about negative experiences they have encountered when hiring or searching for their next role.
I personally experience this problem week to week when speaking with potential new clients. “We are getting bombarded with irrelevant CV’s and they are wasting our time, so what makes you different and why should we use you?”
So as a manufacturing or engineering business, what factors should you be taking into consideration when selecting a recruitment partner, that is ultimately going to provide you with the best talent in the marketplace?
Are they a specialist?
This can be particularly difficult to identify, as so many recruitment companies advertise themselves to be ‘specialists.’ My advice and first points of call are to check out the recruiter’s website and what jobs are they advertising. Is there a common theme with regards to positions or are the roles being advertised from a wide range of industries? If the answer is the latter, it would suggest to me they are not the ‘specialist’ they claim to be.
What is the employment background of the consultants?
The recruitment company you choose to be your talent acquisition partner should have a strong background in both recruitment to your sector and ideally a background of working within your sector.
Will it save you time?
Choosing the right specialist recruitment partner saves you time, which ultimately saves you money. Whilst you may have a designated individual responsible for recruitment in house, the recruitment process can be lengthy.
A specialist recruitment partner will have a database of thousands of pre-screened candidates, ready to be interviewed immediately. In addition, a good, specialist recruiter will dedicate a good proportion of the recruitment assignment to actively ‘headhunting’ talent that is not actively looking for work, giving you access to the best pool of candidates.
Fees?
‘You get what you pay for’ – this is, in most cases, the truth. A recruitment fee will generally reflect the type of position you are looking to fill. It is also a reflection of how much time and effort goes into finding the right talent for your business. So, whilst you might pay what you think is quite a substantial fee, it will more than likely pay off in the long term as you’re hiring good, quality talent that your recruitment partner has proactively sourced.
Will they give honest and open advice on market-rate salary packages?
You will know what the people on your team are being paid, but how does that compare to other organisations working in the same sector? It can be hard to know the true value of talent, which can lead to either losing the ideal candidate by offering them a low salary or securing them by overpaying them and regretting it.
A professional recruiter sees the salaries of all candidates in the marketplace. They are placed to be able to position salary offers based on industry, location and experience. They can save you money as well as making sure that your companies packages accurately reflect the supply and demand of skills accurately all the time.
Following the above suggestions will help ensure you choose the right recruitment partner for your business, enabling a smooth and pain-free experience when hiring talent.
Willcox Matthews is a specialist recruitment company with a combined 30 years’ experience in recruiting to the technical and engineering sectors with a focus on polymers. All the Owners and Consultants at Willcox Matthews have either worked within manufacturing or have been trained at industry-specific training centres, such as the Polymer Training and Innovation Centre.
We welcome the opportunity to understand your current strategy in recruiting the best talent for your business.
