It doesn’t matter whether you work for yourself, an agency, on a retained basis or you get paid only if you place, if you’re an independent recruiter you’ve heard the “why does it cost so much” tune.
Your clients have said it in a hundred different ways, but it always comes down to cost. And try as you might to explain the value you provide, the skills you offer, the expertise you have, the quality your bring, and the time you save, so many clients still have that little nagging voice (which might be coming from a hiring manager or CFO or owner) asking why don’t they do what you do and save a few dollars.
Every now and then comes a CEO who gets it. Vanessa Merit Nornberg, owner of a body and costume jewelry business, is one of them. She wasn’t born a believer in using external recruiters. But she became a convert when she was persuaded to work with a fashion recruiter to fill a position.
Nornberg was so impressed with the result that she wrote about the virtues of working with external recruiters for the Inc. magazine audience. Her article begins with a confession:
My company, Metal Mafia, has an excellent candidate screening process, a super training program, and a very successful team of employees to show for it.
But hiring has always been a difficult task for me because each time I get ready to hire, it takes me forever to find the right type of candidates to even get the screening process started.
By the end of her short story, Nornberg is applauding the process and praising the work of the recruiter. “The cost suddenly became much less, because I saved so much time in the process, and because I got a pool of applicants who were decidedly better to choose from than in the past,” she writes.
Read her full article here. And don’t miss the part where this smart, savvy CEO discovers that the best candidates don’t send resumes.
