Executive Search Associates

If you spend any time on professional social media you will see the topics of talent acquisition, recruiting, executive search and job search are hot trending topics.  There is a lot of conversation about the necessity of using professional recruiters to find talent; there are also posts about the negative sides of engaging with a search firm.  I have read an article from a corporate recruiting thought leader stating 3^rd party recruiting will be extinct by 2020, and another article stating that companies will go out of business without search firms to find them the right people.  Rather than discuss the validity or future of the industry, we should consider the situations when a company should or should not use a search firm to fill an open position.

A few of the reasons to use a search firm:

1. Your company is growing faster than you can hire.
2. Your company has experienced an unfortunate bout of recent bad press.  Bad press happens to the best of companies.  Your company may have an incident of some form and on a slow news day is suddenly on the five-minute replay reel.  Even small town local papers sometimes publish a minor incident with enough “spin” that a company can look bad and experience hiring problems. You need somebody to tell your side of the story. Recruiters can find people who don’t listen to gossip and aren’t afraid of challenges.
3. A new executive is hired and brings a fresh vision. Not everybody is on board, in fact you notice your key staff are diving overboard faster than you can hire.  A new vision can bring exciting growth but if you are in a “man overboard” situation you probably need some help. We like to call this search and rescue.
4. A competitor targets your company to poach your employees.  You lose three or more people in a short time frame to one key competitor.  You see the first employee who left for this competitor at the grocery store in her new Tesla, and she tells you your competitor is offering internal referral bonuses.  Okay, maybe you don’t see the new Tesla, but when your imagination runs wild it does come to mind! Uh-oh. You should probably get some help. Some recruiting help and some “other” help.
5. You already have a full-time job, and that job does not include cold calling strangers at your competitor to see if they are open to a career growth opportunity.  You don’t have time to review over 100 direct applications, call and screen the people yourself to narrow down the pool.
6. It is a difficult to fill position, or there are more jobs than qualified people in your industry.  You can’t win the war for talent as a one-person army.
7. You need a professional approach both in the marketplace and internally.  You need to be able to walk into your boss’s office or the board room and say that you have identified the top five people for a position. You need to show them the resumes and a professional comparison of each applicant.
8. Your employees need to know you care enough to make sure they have the best possible person to lead them. Using a professional search firm is the evidence they need that you have done everything you can to find them an experienced leader.
9. You need people from a competitor but can’t or aren’t willing to call the competitor to attract their people to your team.

A few of the reasons you should not use a search firm:

1. 1)You need somebody, but it is not urgent and your budget is tight. You are in the internal corporate recruiting role and your boss says, “if we have to pay a fee, then you aren’t doing your job right.”
2. Your company does not have any non-solicit agreements with your competitor(s), and you are not afraid to call and recruit their best people away.
3. You like being hands on and like being involved in the details of hiring. You would rather be involved in the details of recruiting than spend money for somebody else to do this work.
4. You have extra time on your hands, need something to keep you busy and love talking on the phone all day.
5. You have a very large network, you know everybody in your space and you don’t mind calling to see if they want to work with you.
6. You have relationships with search firms and they do send you people, but you would rather fill the job on your own.  You are using those candidates to measure your ability to attract qualified people on your own.  The recruiters don’t mind, since they are willing to work on a contingency basis.
7. You think you might need help finding somebody, but you don’t really want to pay a recruiter.  Truth be told, if after the recruiter finds a few people you might even hold off deciding to see if somebody applies before you must make an offer.  You need to make sure the job is covered, and candidates from a recruiter can help you in that endeavor.
8. Your company offers referral bonuses and you have your eye on that new Tesla! Oh wait, they won’t pay referral bonuses to hire your own employees.  Darn it!

There can be many benefits to engaging a third-party search firm, but it is equally important to know why you shouldn’t. I encourage all my clients to ask themselves the following question: “Do I want this recruiter to succeed in filling the job?”.  If the answer is anything other than a resounding YES, then it is better to hold off and give it a go on your own for a while.

Engaging with a search firm before you are ready or willing to hire can hurt your reputation as a potential employer.  If somebody you are interviewing through a recruiter gets the sense that you are not genuinely interested or measuring them against some impossible standard they won’t want to work there, ever.  They will probably even tell a few of their colleagues, friends or family who are other people you might want to recruit or worse…customers!

Taking the time to consider carefully your need and desire for engaging a third-party search firm could be one of the most important hiring decisions you make.

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