After my two articles on Headhunting and The talk on discovery of candidates’ secrets held by Motibee Media of which I was a presenter, I found out that many people are really interested in problems in recruiting faced by a direct recruiter and an outsourcing agency. I want to share some more opinions of a recruitment agency hired to recruit labors with its advantages and disadvantages in “selecting talents”.
Making best us of candidates’ potentials

Businesses often interview candidates for specific positions and explore the values of each candidate through predetermined criteria, just like solving a math problem, with certain formula and standard process. On the contrary, candidates submitting their applications to any position will make best use of the information to prepare well. Sometimes they adjust their CV in terms of time and duties so that they sound good for the position. Also, they will give the favorable details and hide what that does not really fit in the interview.

One agency will have quality applications updated year in year out. Based on recruitment requirement from businesses, the agency interacts more effectively with candidates through current and future job opportunities. They approach each other openly based on the needs for new job searching. It will be easy for candidates to talk about their personalities, life and work viewpoints and determine their long and short term targets honestly. By this, agency will have an overview of the candidates and advise them the best suited position.

Making best use of candidates’ relationships

Another advantage is the agency makes it a long term target to build relationship with candidates. This does not end with a successful or unsuccessful position filling at a period of time. Moreover, they have chances to know the community around the candidate, of which they can get to know other candidates of the same field and may be more suitable for the position in question.
If a business interviews a candidate with an unsatisfactory result, they can’t ask him to recommend one of his friends, one that he feels right for the job. However, an agency can do this as they have other attractive opportunities for that candidate.

Evaluating candidates
Being a third party, the agency can make the candidate feel more comfortable and then can get more information. In recruitment process, businesses often ask candidates to mention the references for an official reference. It is, however, inadvisable to totally trust the references recommended by the candidates as these people often have good relationship with candidates and will have good evaluation. With a wide network and skills accumulated with time, the agency can find many reliable sources around the candidate’s relation to assess more precisely. They will find information from that candidate’s friends, colleagues as 10 objective ideas are certainly better than just one or two.

Advantages along with difficulties
After I recruited a senior staff for a business, my relationship with the CEO became stronger. He experienced the professional approach and recruitment message of a recruitment agency, also he understood the recruiting capacity with the success in recruiting. As a result, it is understandable why he continued to use recruitment service after that.

These advantages do not mean that we don’t have difficulties. The biggest challenge is that, as we are not inside the business, we can’t understand all of its complex aspects, those which are not written. For instance, a business can’t tell the recruit agency right from the beginning that “My boss is very keen on feng shui” or “My boss is a very imposing type of person” or “ My boss just likes to have meetings after working hours”, and many other sensitive things.

Luckily, they can learn and solve this problem based on their skills of collecting information by having many candidates interviewed. They will record the feedback from candidates on the bosses (also the interviewers), working style and culture of the company. Often after interviews, a business will get a thank you letter from candidates with general information. With the reports of the recruitment agency on market information and candidates’ feedback, on the contrary, businesses can cross check the sources and gradually improve the recruitment process. This brings about mutual understanding between the business and the agency, also leads to a “win-win” cooperation spirit.