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Protect your recruitment – Why using a recruitment partner is like buying insurance

The most common objections to using a recruitment partner are usually centred around the cost of hiring. We covered a lot of this in a recent article, but one element is really worth picking up on. There is a misconception that we would like to address about the cost of using a recruitment specialist to help you find and place the right candidate, and this is what happens if the candidate you eventually hire leaves?

Firstly, before we think about the question of the new hire leaving within the first few weeks, we need to put this into perspective. One of the most compelling reasons for looking to a recruitment partner to help you complete your team is that the resulting candidates are likely to be a better fit for the role. Unless you have a full team of HR specialists supporting you already, you simply cannot do the same job internally. A good recruiter will do more than just shuffle a few CVs and send a candidate to meet you. They are experienced in selection, so the candidates they send will have already been pre-matched to meet your requirements. A really good recruiter will know you, know your business, and fully understand your needs. What that means is that you may never even need to worry about a situation where a candidate leaves the role in the first few weeks, because the chances of a bad hire have already been minimised.

This is the real world

However, this is the real world, and sometimes, despite the best of efforts, things do go wrong. No matter what safeguards you put in place, the possibility of a bad hire or some unforeseen circumstances occurring will always be there.

So, let’s look at the question again. When you are asking about the cost of using a recruiter, you are actually asking about what happens if something goes wrong? You must be, because if it doesn’t go wrong, then the cost of the hire was clearly justified because you will have the right employee on your team.

It’s like buying insurance

This is where it all gets rather like buying insurance. When you take out an insurance policy, you are covering yourself against the potential for something to go awry. Your business has public liability and probably employee insurance just in case there is an incident. It is a part of the cost of business because it is a way of reducing the impact of something detrimental happening.

When you agree terms with a good recruiter, you have an insurance policy built in. Every good recruitment partner will have a very clear policy on their response should the candidate they help you find turn out to be the wrong one. Much like an insurance policy, the refund or replace process means that should the new employee turn out to be the wrong choice, you are covered.

The specifics may vary and, as with any terms and conditions agreement, they could occasionally change so we suggest you always check what the bad hire policy is. That said, they will all have the same basic promise that in the event of something going wrong in the early term of a hire, the recruiter will either:

– Look to replace the candidate with another suitably qualified and capable one

– Or offer recompense in the form of a refund

The last one is commonly on a sliding scale, and both will have a reasonable time limit built into them.

 

So, when it comes to the concern about the cost of using a recruitment partner to find the right person, the honest answer is that you have potentially so little to lose that not using one really doesn’t add up.

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