Recruitment RAMS #2: Spend minutes with your recruiter and save hours when hiring

March 30th 2023

Time is precious, especially for hiring managers. When you’re busy with other things, spending time briefing a recruiter may not seem like a valuable exercise.

Before we get into it, there are three things you need to know:

  • The more your recruiter knows, the more likely they are to get the right people in front of you first time
  • A good job spec can be a recruiter brief (two birds, one stone!)
  • Generic job descriptions will get you generic candidates

Take 10 minutes to speak to your recruiter using the following pointers and it will knock hours off the time you need to spend finding your next great hire.

Forget about the job title

You’ll know already that the one job role can have several different titles. A site manager at one company might be a site agent or site supervisor at another. So don’t get caught up in the job title because this isn’t the most important thing.

Define the scope first and talk through it with your recruiter, then they can help you with a title that’ll attract the right applicants for your specific vacancy.

Highlight flexible working

Now more than ever, people want to work closer to home. Flexible working and the ability to work from home is desirable, and totally possible now we have the infrastructure to facilitate it.

Be sure to tell your recruiter about any flexible working or work from home policies your company offers. Just as important is to let them know if the candidate will be based at a certain location and for how many days per week. This way they can make it clear when they’re qualifying people for the role.

Be clear on salary

It shouldn’t surprise you to know that job adverts without a salary receive 27% fewer applications. To have the best chance of attracting the best talent, be transparent, allow your recruiter to advertise the role with a salary, and be willing to discuss it in more depth.

Share why you’re hiring

Your recruiter needs to understand why you’re hiring. For example, if you’re replacing someone it helps to know why the previous person left. Likewise, if you’re expanding and need a bigger team then make that clear.

You should share what’s going well (and badly) in your company. What does your project pipeline look like? What’s next in your plan? This is all valuable information that can be passed to a potential candidate to win them over. Which brings us to our next point…

Why should someone who is happy in their current role come and work for you?

It’s difficult to hire in a skills shortage. So if your recruiter can clearly communicate why people should come and work for you, life’s going to be easier!

Keep in mind that there are three types of people who look for a job; people who need one, people who are open to finding something better, and people who don’t need one but don’t really enjoy their current role.

People who are open to finding something better makes up around 65-75% of the workforce. This is a great target area and why you should showcase the positive reasons for joining your team.

Tell them about your current team

The size of team the person will be joining typically matters to more experienced candidates. If you share this with your recruiter, they can find people that are excited to work in a team of the size and structure that yours is.

What will they be responsible for?

You also need to be clear on what the person will be doing each day. List 5 or 6 fundamental aspects, with a couple of bullet points under each to explain further. If you have a good, experienced recruiter, they can do the majority of this for you.

Don’t forget experience and qualifications

Pretty much what it says on the tin. Outline the essential experience and qualifications that you’re looking for. Include desirable and soft skills in your list, this way your recruiter has the full picture of who you want in the team so they can get out and find the right fit.

Ready to save time?

Spend 10 minutes speaking to one of our team and we’ll shave hours off your candidate search. Get in touch.