Now days we are witnessing the mushrooming of lot of Recruitment Agencies. There is a common perception that, as Recruitment is a booming Industry & doesn’t require much Capital Investment, therefore, entering the Recruitment Business is quite easy & Profitable. Staring a Job Consultancy is easy but the challenge is in sustaining the business in the long term and growing it brick by brick. There are lots of Firms /Organisations are operating in the market, but to spot the Best / Effective Job Consultancy is a challenge

The success of a Recruitment Agency depends largely on the quality of the Recruiters / Placement consultants in the Organisation, and obviously on the Key Person(s) who is envisaging the endeavors & managing the Agency.

The agency must have an attitude that reflects the desire to help their clients to get the best talented professional as per the requirements. Recruitment is a holistic approach.A successful recruiter in a reputed recruitment firm will possess some unique traits like Analytical Capabilities to Understand & Interpret the Mandate, Excellent Communication Skills, Networking Proficiency, Smart Work Mind-set with Appropriate Mental , Intellectual as well as Technical Aptitudes, Content Writing Skills and Knowledge of Different Verticals in which the Placement Agency is specialized / working upon.

The Recruiters / Consultants should also be a good listener and must have the proper understanding of the communication delivered by clients & job seekers so that a perfect match can be found out and right person is selected for the right job. A Recruiter / Job Consultant should also possess Sales & Business Acumen, so that they can understand a client’s business and the customers with whom the client is dealing. This understanding & conception will help the Recruiter / Consultant to Shortlist or Recommend the Appropriate & Interested Candidate(s) for a Specific Profile.

A Recruiter / Placement Consultant who takes great care in marketing, branding and promotion of the services he or she is offering through online and offline means can be a great asset for any prospective organization since if he/she is well versed in selling his company to potential clients, it is imperative that he/she will skilfully attract top talents in his client organization because of his/ her sales acumen

An important aspect of a Recruiter is the ability to manage time very effectively as he / she has to bring the right candidate on board in the time slot allotted by the client.

Recruiter should be Tech-savvy and must be able to use Social Media Tools such as LinkedIn, Periscope, Facebook, Twitter etc. very effectively. Apart from these, applicant Tracking Software, multiple Job Portals, Job Postings, Mass Mails and Premium databases are used by Recruiters in order to find the right candidate.

Problem solving skills must be there with a Recruiter as many tough situations will arise during a complex Recruitment assignment. Reliability in work builds trust factor and helps to face challenges in this field.And finally team handling skills is very crucial in the part of a Recruitment Consultant when multiple resources under his / her ambit are working on an assignment to fill different positions in a single / multiple organization and the job profiles have been successfully closed after meaningful negotiations

Consistency is also a characteristic of a Top Job Consultancy. It is essential for the Recruiter / Consultant to walk the talk on his/ her communications and commitment with the client and the prospective job seekers.

It goes without saying that to become one of the Best Job Consultancy, the Recruitment Firms have to strive towards making themselves credible, trusted, innovative and marketable to attract the attention of the clients seeking their services.

Human Capital – The spine of any organization; and stronger the spine, better is the growth. This is where, choosing the right Candidate for any Organization becomes extremely important. A good Resource can do wonders if He / She is given a correct role and proper responsibilities, but if a good resource is placed in an incorrect job then it will tremendously affect the Organization as well as his / her own confidence. Hence, a right person has to be Hired for the Right Job at a rational compensation and in the shortest of time, and then only, it will a win-win situation for both the Organization & the Employee. This is where the expertise of a Placement Consultant comes into play.

The data shows that Recruitment by deploying Placement Consultants / Executive Search Agencies save up to 40% of the Recruitment Costs of an Organization. Therefore, the Growth of the Recruitment Industry has been phenomenal in recent times. At present, the Value of Recruitment Process Outsourcing Industry (RPO) in India stands at a whopping $2.5 Billion & is projected to Grow at an Annual Rate of 30 to 40% for a few more Years. (Ref: Human Resource Management by Mr. Pravin Duari, Published by PEARSON).

Organizations, on the other hand is taking this opportunity to fill in vacant positions at the earliest by floating same mandates to numerous placement consultants. idea is to give the same work to multiple agencies and pay to only one. Though this practice looks amazingly beneficial to organizations but it leads to serious unrecognized problems which impacts the company in the long run.

When a job description or a profile is floated among many placement consultants, it loses its exclusivity. The question is, “So what?” Well, many premium consultants think that they lose the passion to work on those mandates as there is no exclusivity in them. Everyone wants to be one among the mass, and so do the consultants. Giving specific mandates to specific consultants make them feel important to the organization and most importantly they feel trusted as they know that the organization has faith and confidence in them that they will be able to deliver. Apart from this, there is also a chance of peeking into the insights of an organization’s human capital by the competitors. This becomes not so difficult if there are multiple recruitment consultants working for an organization and their competitors. Hence, it is more than necessary to work with good but limited consultants.

At times, with sheer aggression to get in more clients, lots of consultants have lowered down their rates without having a proper understanding of the mandates or profiles. Later, they either cannot justify the remuneration with the work they have agreed for or they take way too long to deliver which hampers the organization’s time and effort in interviewing the undeserving candidates. The company takes the maximum hit which has a multiplier effect in the overall recruitment process and the loss of time.

It is extremely important to choose the right recruitment consultant as they are the people who will help you get the most important capital for your organization. With technology showing the world a brighter day every day, it is gaining prominence in every industry. Various job portals have literally become the backbone of these placement consultants. An organization should be aware of the quality of portals or the database a consultant has, before choosing them. They should be well equipped with a proper CV management system and should have subscriptions to premium job postings also with tracking software which is a must. These tools will help a consultant to screen and filter out the most relevant candidates from the mass.

However accuracy technology gives, it can never substitute the passion of human intelligence. While choosing a placement consultant, the organization must be aware of the consultant’s key employees and recruiters and their track records. It becomes very important to know their client base and the kind of profiles they pioneer in or they have successfully closed. A proven track record of the consultant will always help an organization to decide upon.

Most importantly, an organization should not have a recruitment consultant as their vendor but should have them as a partner. Being a recruitment partner, a consultant will be entrusted with more responsibility and confidence. They will be a part of the organization’s mission, vision and policies.

For Small and Medium Enterprises, proper talented resources are crucial to run and sustain their business. They cannot go for costly advertisements like their larger counterparts in leading dailies or spend lot of money in branding in leading job portals.

So how do they find talent in a cost effective way? The obvious answer to their problems is that, they can engage a right mix of digital marketing by on page optimization of their website, social media and off page optimization such as through blogs and articles.

So let’s discuss on how to optimize the corporate website of an SME to attract top resources

The website contains lot of links in the header section in the homepage of which a very crucial part is the “Career” section. Most of the times the organizations use it to just post job openings which does not incite too much interest in the minds of a talented professional because of lack of information about the company’s outlook towards its employees and vice versa.

Hence companies should publish some crucial information such as

· About the Organization on the Perspective of Employee Engagement

· Benefits of Joining

· Vertical Wise Career Opportunities

· Meet Our People

· Spirit of the Company

· Work Environment

· Business Ethics

· Equal Opportunities

· Sustainability

· Campus & Internships

· Information About Hiring Process

· Tips & Guides on Enhancing Resumes

· Interview Tips

· Fraud Awareness

· FAQ’s

· Employee Video Testimonials

· Employee Events & Stories

· Awards & Recognition

· Work Life Balance

It’s always a great option if the contents can be shared in social media platforms. Another important aspect is that the website should be mobile friendly so that all the information can be easily viewed and consistently accessed in all mobile browsers.

It has been observed that about 80% of job seekers agree that company’s job-site plays the key role in motivating and inspiring them to apply for a job. And recent studies do substantiate the claim further. Research shows that a whopping 90% of job seekers are likely to apply for a job if the company actively manages its employer brand on digital platform.

Once the website is armed with sufficient information aiding the prospective employees, the next logical step will be to optimize the image of the company in the social media platforms.

Linkedin is a good tool in that aspect. The SMEs should motivate their existing employees and top management people to create their profiles in Linkedin and share informative posts and promote company events. Linkedin is also a good place to post information related to job vacancies

The Company should also be having a Facebook page and should use it as a branding platform with related engaging contents so that it gives a insight to the visitors about how the company and its people work.

Social media platforms are the most popular channels for job seekers these days and there has been a major shift observed in how people go ahead with their job search. 60% of the job seekers in India use social networking sites to look for jobs, study reveals.

Inference:

Ultimately it all boils down to understanding how and why candidates are looking for jobs and then delivering the right content to engage them, otherwise, the recruiter would be missing a tremendous opportunity to build a pipeline of great talent and set themselves apart from competitors.

Recruitment marketing is definitely a multi-faceted process, and employers that are trying to find high-quality hires need their recruitment teams and tools to perform many different functions. Organizations have to look at existing processes and strategies and decide whether recruiters, marketers or a newly created partnership between talent acquisition and marketing will create the best results. Today’s most successful recruiters adapt to evolving job seeker behavior and to the more consumer-friendly platform.

In our business interactions with our Prospective Clients, we often get queries from them that why we don’t charge some small fee from the Candidates when many people will be willing to Pay. They are of the opinion that many Placement Consultants generally follow this practice and in their view it is a good way to Recruit Candidates. Many a times the logic given by them is since they are providing the job opportunity they are not going to Pay for the service and people willing to grab the opportunity should pay.

While we do not want to comment regarding the information that whether other Placement Agencies Charge Candidates or Not, we can explain the reasons on our behalf for not charging the candidates & how it is beneficial to the Client.

A) Under no circumstances, the recruitment agency should charge from the Candidates. Law forbids Placement Consultants / Executive Searching Agencies from charging job-seekers to secure them employment as this can lead to willful malpractice by Unethical Placement Consultants to lure Job-Seekers & Exploit the situation for their Monetary Benefits.

B) If any placement consultants levy Charges from Candidates, the Agency will only recommend those candidates who are ready to Pay & not the best possible interested Candidates

C) The job of a Placement Consultant is to source, screen & recommend best possible interested Candidates against a specific Mandate to the Client. This is not possible, if the consultant itself charges Fee from the Candidates.

D) If we assume that some / many Placement Agencies are Charging from the Employment Seekers , we can definitely say that these unethical Recruitment Agencies generally try to cash in on the fear factor of a candidate and in today’s tough marketplace, a Fresher or a Job-seeker in a dire need of a Job to earn His /Her Livelihood ,are the most likely to fall in their trap

We sometimes find in Media / Market that the unscrupulous Recruitment Agencies try to rip off 1 to 2 months of Salary or ask for Deposit from Candidates to work on their CV’s & try to find appropriate Opportunities for them. It can therefore be said that ,these Agencies try to allure Candidates whose salaries are at a lower range and whose skills are not much in demand

Hence from the point of an employer it will be always be prudent decision if he engages with reputed Recruitment Consultants who do not get biased just on Paid search results on Online Recruitment Portals or get attracted to the revenue angle of Charging Money from Candidates.

When the Recruitment Agency is unbiased & practice ethical business practices , more are the chances that the Employer will find True Talent to manage his / her Business and this will bring rewards in the form of more business to the Recruitment Agency / Placement Consultant.

Being able to meet delivery of appropriate CV’s of interested candidates adhering to a strict timeline is an integral part of a seasoned recruitment consulting agency but sometimes the client exerts too much pressure on the agency for the delivery of suitable CV’s with in a very short time frame which actually does not sound practical in most of the cases as there are lot of background activities involved prior to the shortlisting of a CV.

In the point of view of the client, his/her immediate need is to fill up the vacancy since, the longer the position goes unfilled, the more, productivity of his/her organization will be disrupted

But the background works which finally leads to the shortlisting of a CV consists of understanding the client’s requirements in detail, researching the suitable candidate data from data banks, business social networks, references & connections.

During the search process the recruitment consultant has to scan lot of information such as the location, industry, function, level, recent experience, education, job changes, spelling errors, poor format, errors in grammar in the CV’s and also have to look out for CV’s which are too long, verbose and rambling for proper filtering. Also social and web search of a candidates profile is a must

Armed with the information the placement consultant’s next job is to approach the potential candidates and gauge their interest level on the role and organization. He should clearly inform the candidate about the job profile and make every proposition interesting to the candidate without any pinch of salt. These interactions are done through mail communications as well as through phone calls

He or she has to speak to them and try to understand, analyse & decide upon their knowledge, actual experience related to the job profile. Also gauging the motivation level, smartness and communication ability of the candidate is a prerequisite for the consultant.

All these activities cannot be done in a hurry and all the steps have to be properly completed before handing over the CV to the client else there are chances that the client might find a wrong candidate sitting in front of him for an interview and that can be quite a taxing experience when the recruitment process involves interaction with large number of candidates.

So how to solve the issues when the speed of delivery is the main criteria. The answer lies in harnessing the power of software. There are software tools from vendors such as Bullhorn and according to their research, 57% of candidates who are successfully placed are submitted by recruiters within the first 24 hours of receiving a job order. Effective recruiting technology can be a key to help recruitment agencies respond to clients and candidates before their competitors.

So it is imperative that in today’s age of super fast recruiting, a recruiter has to accomplish his task with the right mix of technology, talent, agility, analytical ability and investigative skills so as to place more candidates for better business growth.