News and Insights

By: Tom King, Executive Recruiter – Practice Leader, Engineering & Manufacturing

Have you found yourself seated in a conference room, late-day Friday, after reviewing your companies open positions with the management team only to realize that a key role remains open and has been open for months and the bleary-eyes of overworked team members filling the gap in the roles vacancy are staring back at you wondering why you can’t seem to find the right person? It is a common problem in some companies today – those companies aren’t realizing the changes in the hiring market over the last 5 years. Things are NOT the way they have always been. The environment has changed, thus our hiring model needs to change with it:

• Hiring processes need to be modified and streamlined creating nimble decision-makers to act quickly.
• The market and your competition for good talent are moving fast. When a candidate is identified for the position, the process of decision, offer and start needs to be quickened.
• Don’t bench a hirable candidate to continue the interview process – it will be highly unprobeable that the candidate you worked hard to identify will be waiting around 2 weeks from now when you decide to deliver an offer. There are far too many opportunities for these candidates in the market and the competitive offer has time to surface.

Recruiting the right person is as challenging today as it has been in the last 20 years. Today’s job market is just different and the days of “post and pray” are long since passed. There are so many more competitive forces for viable, strong candidates than we have ever experienced previously. So, why do companies continue to recruit the way they have for 20 years and expect that these methods will work the same way they always have? The days of spending weeks interviewing and selecting from a large pool of candidates is over. Speed is king in today’s job market.

There have always been several methods by which candidates can be reached. Well-meaning, internal Recruiters know many of them and can use them with good results, but a Recruiter who specializes in your geographical market, your industry, your area of skill set is a fantastic tool that can be wielded to find the right candidate. Targeted External Recruiters can be the difference between a bleary-eyed, overworked manager staring at you from across the desk and an energized team member managing processes that push the company to the next level.

Relationships – In the movie “Jerry Mcguire” (one of my all-time favorites), Jerry’s mentor, Dicky Fox, would be recalled interjecting words of wisdom that actually rings true in the business world today. One such quote was: “The key to this business is personal relationships.” True, so true! Executive Recruiters are an extension of your own personal relationships. The longer a Recruiter has been working in the field, the more of these relationships have been formed and – the best part – the referral network is wide-open to Recruiters who build these relationships with candidates with whom they work. This just deepens a selection group of possible candidates for these Recruiters clients.  These relationships are developed from involving the recruiting effort every day – year after year.  Let us at Bell & Associates show you the speed at which we travel – bringing you to a successful hire, easier and faster!