I’m not happy with my recruitment agency, what should I do?

A quality recruiter will approach your recruitment partnership as a long-term opportunity to support leaders and hiring managers with workforce planning and development.  They will aim to help you achieve both your immediate and long-range hiring needs. 

Like any skilled consultant, the expertise of an experienced recruiter can add significant value to your recruitment process.  A skilled recruiter can help you change the course of your organisation by helping you access top talent.  

But what happens if it doesn’t go well and you’re not seeing the results you’d hoped for? 

Preventing unhappiness in the first place

Here are a few things that both recruiter and hiring manager or internal talent acquisition team can do up front to prevent problems from occurring:

Open communication

From the initial briefing all the way through to onboarding a new employee, communication between recruitment partner and manager should be open, honest and timely. My team work with a wide range of hiring managers as well as some of the best internal talent acquisition teams in the country and no matter who we are dealing with, we have found that success comes from ‘being on the same team’, which is achieved by sharing the same objective and communicating clearly and frequently.  It's about being able to address tough or tricky conversations with confidence and honesty.  

If you use a recruitment agency for your next project, make sure you discuss timelines, objectives and any expected challenges at the outset.

Expect questions

In our article Hiring A Recruitment Agency, we outlined 10 critical questions you should be ready to answer when you partner with a recruiter. Expect a quality recruitment partner to ask a lot of questions - and not simply about the vacant role. 

A quality recruitment partner will ask a tonne of questions about the role, the team, your leadership style, what challenges are ahead for the business, and then they will likely ask questions to help you challenge your own assumptions.  They will also help you unpack your expectations of their service. 

When it comes to recruitment, quality questions are essential. 

It freaks me out when I hear stories of recruiters ‘assuming’ they know what an organisation is looking for.  When hiring goes wrong it harms and organisation so getting it right is important.

I’d even go as far as suggesting you avoid working with a recruiter who doesn’t ask a lot of questions (they may be making dangerous assumptions instead). 

Regular check-ins

This is part of open communication. A good recruitment partner will provide you with an update on your project every 48 hours (or at another timeframe, established during the briefing stage). During these check ins, your recruiter will update you on things like, how well the talent market is responding to your role, how the salary bracket you attached to the role is comparing to other roles in the market, how jobseekers are responding to your brand, and the rate of rejection your role is receiving.

Your recruiter will also update you on some of the early-stage talent that they are evaluating.    

These checkpoints are an ideal opportunity for you to share feedback if you’re not happy with their service, or if the early-stage talent they are updating you about doesn’t sound like it is hitting the mark.   

I would like to underscore an expectation that we (the recruiters) have of you at this stage: When we are updating you on the types of talent that we are evaluating; if it does not sound like we are heading in the right direction, we expect, we want, we need you to say it then and there.  

It is rare that a recruiter will head down the wrong rabbit hole after a good role briefing, but if for some reason its happening, we need you to feel comfortable telling us.

Think of these regular check ins as a two-way opportunity. We’ll update you on our progress and you get to provide us feedback as to if we are heading in the right direction for you.

Think partner, not supplier

Good recruitment is a collaborative process - both recruiter and hiring manager have a role to play ensuring a successful outcome. Like any partnership, the more you put in, the more you get back.  

Tell it how it is

Hand on heart, a good recruiter wants your feedback - so don’t hold back!  Research suggests customers don’t speak up when they are unhappy with a service - out of fear of ruining the relationship.

When my team ask one of their customers for feedback they are not just looking to ‘get it right’; they  want to knock it out of the park! So don’t hold back.  Ever.

Giving honest feedback means your recruiter isn’t navigating blindly and can make improvements in real time.

Ask about the process

A good recruiter will have an effective talent acquisition strategy and should be able to talk you through the process they’ll follow in great detail.  They will have a range of recruitment tools and tech that they can deploy, and they will have insight about how to position your role in its best light, while not overselling it.

Opportunities for intervention 

Throughout any hiring process, there are many check in points and opportunities for intervention if you’re not happy.

Please speak up and give honest feedback whenever you can. If you feel more comfortable, you could give your recruiter a heads up via email before delivering the feedback over the phone or face to face.

A good recruiter is not afraid of your feedback. Instead, they will use your feedback as fuel to drive future performance. 

Creating a good relationship with your recruiter will take time.  But its worth doing.  A good recruiter can help you change the course of your organisation or team, by helping you access the best talent to build a high performing team.

Recruiters have a lot to offer when it comes to human capital strategies, and they will often share their knowledge freely. So, take your time when finding the right recruitment partner.  

Invest in building a strong relationship and it will yield significant results over time.