In this age of LinkedIn and contract talent acquisition, some believe that the need for an Executive Recruiter has gone away. Fight your HR misconception because this IS NOT accurate.
HR Misconception 1
By using LinkedIn internal staff can be as effective in sourcing candidates as any recruiting firm. In this job market of extremely low unemployment and candidates receiving multiple offers, can your internal staff be knowledgeable about every functional area you need to hire for? Yes, they might get lucky in one search through LinkedIn finding a viable candidate, but do they have the time to call passive candidates who aren’t on the market? Do they understand the position well enough to sell those passive candidates on the opening? Niche recruiters who are recruiting in the same application area every day can source candidates for you much quicker and more efficiently than even a terrific internal recruiter without any specialty knowledge.
HR Misconception 2
Hiring internal contract recruiters is more efficient and cost effective than using external recruiters. If you have multiple openings in the same area, say account executives in an advertising agency, a contract recruiter can mimic how niche executive recruiters work, and be effective in sourcing candidates. But if your openings are across multiple functional areas, IT, Data Science, Sales, Marketing, Accounting, Finance, no contract recruiter can get up-to-speed at recruiting for each of these positions as fast as a specialty external recruiter who spends every day working in one functional area. The time it takes for a contract recruiter to understand each job and each market is more costly than hiring a contingent recruiter.
HR Misconception 3
Executive Recruiters are too expensive. Contract recruiters, by law, can only work for you for 18 months before you have to let them go or hire them on staff. Good contract recruiters don’t receive benefits but can make $120K in salary. Training those contractors in your internal methodology, getting to know internal hiring managers and internal needs can take three months or $30,000, one fee for an external executive recruiter. That contract recruiter must make 5 or 6 hires to offset the same cost of an external recruiter, and there is no training, no waiting, for results from an external recruiter.
So get results for your hiring managers quicker and more cost effectively, utilize a contingent recruiter!
The Executive Recruiters at Smith Hanley Associates stand ready to assist you in the areas of Actuarial Science, Data Science and Analytics, Market Research, Pharmaceutical Commercial Analytics, Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Sales, Biostatistics and Medical Affairs Liaisons.
