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A great recruiter will be totally articulate in positioning why a client is doing themselves tremendous harm by getting recruiters to compete.

By all means, let recruiters compete for a client. No problems there. That’s capitalism at its finest. But we should not compete on the same job. That is just dumb business by all parties.

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Let’s examine what is happening when a client gives a brief to say, four recruiters.

The client thinks they get better commitment from each recruiter. In fact we know that quite the reverse is true. We might put a burst of energy into finding candidates for a job ‘in competition’. But if we don’t fill it fast, we lose interest, and put our energy into clients who treat us as partners and are committed to finding the best person through us. That is the reality. But for some reason we don’t tell our clients this.

Are you prepared to look a client in the eye and say “Mr Client, when you give an order to four recruiters, you are effectively giving each recruiter 25% of your commitment. What makes you think that any one of those recruiters will give you more than 25% of their commitment in return? In fact what you are doing Mr Client, is inviting us to approach your crucial hiring decision on the basis of speed — instead on the basis of who can do the best quality job”.

Then go on to ask the client for a “window of opportunity” to handle the role exclusively, so that you can give the role 100% of your commitment and bring all your resources to bear to ensure the best quality outcome.

“Give the job to me exclusively, Ms Client, so I can have the time to put appropriate strategies in place to find the right person – which will of course include researching my database, working my talent
communities, advertising, using my networks and searching the passive talent pool.”

Working multi-listed, contingent perm orders is bad business. It is better to work on six exclusive job orders – of which you will fill five, than to work on 20 in competition, of which you may fill three.