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Four Things to Look For When Hiring a Recruiter Email this article to a friend Printer-friendly version

With the job market for top talent so tight these days, hiring quality recruiters for your company has become more important than ever. But how do you know if the recruiter you're interviewing has the right stuff to give you the advantage over your competition in finding and hiring the best job candidates? One good tactic is to ask a prospective recruiter to walk you through his or her process for finding and hiring a candidate, from the moment a job requisition is delivered until the actual hire. This will give you insight into the recruiter's thoroughness, sophistication, network of contacts, and integrity. But to bring the best recruiter on board, you should also look for these attributes: Attention to recruiting metrics, and an ability to meet metrical goals Sourcing experience—what channels did the recruiter use to make hires? Domain experience—what kind of job candidates does the recruiter have experience hiring? Motivation Attention to Metrics The best recruiters understand corporate recruiting metrics (quantitative measurements of performance), and can achieve metrical goals. For recruiters, quantitative goals, or metrics, can include the number of hires made, the time to hire (overall average time to hire, or time to hire for key positions), return on investment versus the recruiter's budget, and turnover in positions for which the recruiter hired. Find out what metrics candidates were measured by in their previous jobs, and how they performed in terms of those metrics. If a candidate did not meet his or her metrical goals, ask why. There can be good reasons that a recruiter has failed to meet metrical goals. For instance, the recruiter might have been given unrealistic goals—like being given the task of making a large number of technical hires with a very small budget. Look for a recruiter who understands and has experience with the kinds of metrical goals your company will be using to measure his or her performance—and can perform to meet those goals. Sourcing Experience Where did the recruiter find his or her candidates? Does he or she have experience with only a single sourcing channel—online job boards, for instance? Or does the candidate have experience with a wide range of sourcing channels? Good recruiters will have a strong network of other recruiters and professionals in job functions in which your company wants to increase hiring. The best recruiters will have a Rolodex full of contacts whom they can tap to get your company the best candidates available. They'll also be aggressive—the kind of people who aren't reluctant to make cold calls to companies when they are hiring for hard-to-fill positions. The best way to learn about these kinds of things is to ask simply, "Where do you get your candidates?" If a recruiter can't give you a direct, clear answer, watch out. A good recruiter will be able to reel off the sourcing techniques that have brought him or her the most success. And ideally, he or she will bring significant new knowledge to your company. If you can find a recruiter who has experience sourcing via channels that are utterly new to your company, you stand a better chance of finding candidates you would have missed without the new recruiter. Domain Experience It's key to learn what kinds of candidates the recruiter has experience hiring. Make sure he or she has experience hiring the kinds of candidates your company needs. For example, if your company is a small startup, but a recruiter has experience only with big companies, you should consider that a strike against the candidate. The same is true if you're looking for a recruiter to bring in a bunch of technical people, but the person you're interviewing has experience hiring only marketing types. Finally, ask the recruiters you interview what levels of candidates they've had significant experience hiring. If you're looking for key management-level hires, but a recruiter has significant experience hiring only for junior positions, the candidate is probably not going to have the experience (or contacts) necessary to help you. What Motivates the Recruiter? The best recruiters are motivated by the challenges of recruiting itself. Money is a factor for good recruiters, but the very best are those who love finding a good resume for an open position. The best recruiters also love making good matches between job candidates and jobs. They get a charge out of getting to know people, both within their company and outside of it. They enjoy learning about candidates' skills and personalities, and about the jobs they're trying to fill—and they get satisfaction out of bringing the right candidate together with the right job. There are a lot of recruiters who can find candidates whose resumes fit with open job descriptions. The best recruiters are those who can make the difficult hire-and give you the best chance of retaining new hires. - Eric Wilinski WetFeet, Inc. Top of Page