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Hands-on approach to recruitment, Stephanie Jones

18th June 2007

The Great Job Search Debate:

Logged-on OR Hands-on

The hands-on approach to recruitment.

By Stephanie Jones of Nicholson International.

Online recruitment may have flourished in recent years, but the fundamental advantage of traditional executive search remains the human element.

Clients place a premium on the depth and breadth of the services provided by executive search consultants and remain prepared to pay for the individual attention that complex or high-level placements need.

It may be true that internet recruitment attracts more candidates than traditional newspaper advertising, and electronic resume collection may well allow more efficient sorting, but this represents and improvement in just one aspect of recruiting - the passive creation of a candidate pool.

The recruitment process does not end there - in fact, this is only the beginning.  Passive recruiting is not sufficient to attract quality, qualified, experienced and screened candidates.

The fact is the internet does not address major aspects of the recruitment process, including the difficult task of "selling" the opportunity to candidates, the negotiation of packages and the monitoring of new employees after they are hired.

In the United States, research shows that of the three main approaches - executive search, newspaper advertising and online recruiting - the executive search slice of the pie remains more or less intact.  By contrast, internet recruiting firms have taken a big bite out of newspaper advertising's share - they have effectively taken over nearly half of the market.

The experience of a typical international executive search firm is that many clients still need a hands-on approach of the kind not yet provided by internet-based recruiters.

Many clients come to traditional executive search having tried and failed using internet recruiting.  They were attracted to online recruiters by the low prices charged for job vacancy postings and the promise of a rapid response from large numbers of candidates.

However, while they received many CVs, most candidates were not appropriate and the screening process took up too much management time.  Clients who have made placements have found that the new staff tend to continue their internet-surfing habits and soon move on.

Internet recruiting has come a long way from simple job boards, to the more sophisticated services now available.  The online business is said to have moved from an "advertising" to a "transactional" model, and there are claims that it draws out "passive" job seekers and speeds up the recruitment process from weeks to days.

However, the data on speed of service and costing is mostly unaudited and does not cover the full recruiting process.  Internet recruiters are looking at candidate identification only, and their screening tools are only useful if the raw materials - good candidates - are there in the first place.

Yet only 10 per cent of candidates are happy to have their CVs openly accessible to all on the internet.  The increasingly sophisticated nature of computer hacking raises major security issues for active and passive job seekers.  The question has to be asked: who is looking at my CV?

The popularity of internet recruiters is likely to result, in the short-term, in traditional executive search firms concentrating on clients with highly specific niche requests for relatively senior candidates who are in short supply.  These clients will be more concerned with the quality of the results they obtain and with good project management that with the speed and quantity of CVs landing on their desks.

They will also be willing to pay more.  There is unlikely to be pressure on the fees charged by traditional executive search firms because the internet recruiters will not be regarded as a genuine alternative.

In the future, the most successful recruiting dot coms may be the ones that develop a clear specialty in which they can build up a strong database, in the same way that contingency firms in Australia, the US and UK have done.  The traditional executive search firms are likely to remain generalists, however.  Their strength will continue to lie in their client service and research methodology, not in their databases.

Almost none of the placements made by an executive search firm will have sent in his or her CV online.

Their placements were the result of careful targeting, screening, matching and selection, and some of them were introduced to potential employers they had never heard of before.

There would have been delicate negotiations over salary and benefits, and hand-holding through the resignation and notice period to make the placement happen.

Executive search is a labour-intensive activity requiring exceptional judgment, experience and very strong interpersonal skills.  As one prospect told a would-be employer who approached him directly: "I will only talk through an executive search firm."

 

 

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