In this economy, recruiters can’t leave anything to chance. They can’t leave any stone unturned—with both clients AND candidates. Now, you can’t control clients or candidates, but you can manage their expectations. Doing so is the key to maintaining control of the hiring process, and ultimately, to increasing the chances of making more placements.
We asked recruiting industry trainer Dave Knutson of The Knutson Group, LLC for his thoughts regarding how recruiters can set expectations, manage those expectations, and hold clients and candidates accountable for those expectations throughout the hiring process. We’ll start with the client side of the equation.
One of the mistakes a recruiter can make when dealing with clients is not communicating with them enough up front, at the beginning of the process. In other words, the specifics of the search parameters aren’t discussed in detail, and those information gaps can be costly down the road.
Knutson indicated that recruiters must educate clients from the very beginning of the process. Knutson also advocates discussing a timeline for moving things along, as well as exactly who is going to be involved in the interview process on the company’s side. And perhaps most importantly, Knutson asks when the company is expecting to make an offer for the open position. Pinning the client down at the beginning is instrumental to reducing the risk that something is going to go wrong at the end.
“You have to get them to buy into the process,” said Knutson. “If they’re going to ask you to work on their assignment, they should be willing to work with you on the process. And the process should be very timeline-specific. Once we submit candidates to a client, we expect the interview process to begin within two weeks.”
According to Knutson, the mistake many recruiters make is that once they receive a job order, they’re in a hurry to begin the search. As a result, they unknowingly bypass the opportunity to tighten up the process in the long run by hashing out a few details up front.
“Generally what happens is that you get the assignment, you get to work, and you forget to talk about the process,” said Knutson.
And what happens if the process starts to bog down along the way, despite your best efforts to avoid that at the beginning?
“You have to continually prod them along,” said Knutson. “I think it goes back to putting the shoe on the other foot. Ask [the hiring authority] if they were the candidate, would they put up with delays in the process?”
And if all else fails, appeal to the client with a healthy dose of common sense. After all, when a company chooses to utilize the expertise of a recruiter for the purpose of filling an open position, it makes sense to actually heed the advice of that recruiter.
“They’re asking us to help them solve their problems,” said Knutson. “Delaying the process needlessly doesn’t support that premise.”
(Dave Knutson has 25 years of recruiting experience that are reflected in The Knutson Group, LLC’s high standards of professionalism throughout the recruiting process. He is a nationally sought after speaker, trainer, and business coach. Visit The Knutson Group’s website.)
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