Making Sure Candidate Matching Equals Candidate Quality

As any manager or director who has recently agreed recruitment with their HR department will know, there are plenty of CVs about from desperate recruitment agencies pushing desperate candidates. Such managers are finding their Inbox clogged up with candidates that are incredibly poor matches to their requirements.  In many cases, the sheer volume of CVs received can make the few good candidates incredibly difficult to find.

The problems of unsuitable candidates being pushed at clients is now resulting in many high quality potential candidates standing back from the current market. 

“In a recent search for a client, we contacted a number of good quality candidates known by us to be suitable for a role. In each case they said they had removed themselves from the market because of concerns that their CVs were being sent to everyone,” said Paul Harper.  “When we explained that we had a specific position for which they appeared to be a very good fit, they allowed us to pass on their CVs because they have worked with us in the past and know we can be trusted to treat them professionally.

Many managers and directors who are recruiting are telling us that they are getting fed up with the volume of inappropriate, unscreened CVs they are receiving.  “Many recruitment agencies are working solely on a numbers theory, believing that the more CVs they send, the better the chance of one of them being a good fit,” continued Paul.  “I have said to our staff we need to redouble our efforts to secure top quality candidates for clients, so they won’t be distracted by the noise of useless CVs.  We are able to reassure clients that there are good candidates out there, but they come one at a time; mass recruitment methods simply do not work in this market!”

“We are able to reassure clients that there are good candidates out there but they come one at a time. Mass recruitment methods simply do not work in this market!”

We recently rang a company’s recruitment department about a vacancy with some very specific requirements, because we had a candidate who met 80% of one requirement and 100% of the other recruitment criteria. We didn’t want to send the CV if a perfect candidate was already in process. We were amazed to learn from the resourcing department that they were not interested in our candidate as they already had 12 perfect candidates booked in for the Director to interview! Even in these times, 12 candidates meeting 100% of the criteria for a specialist sales role seems surprising. We will be interested to see whether the recruiting director agrees with this assessment once he has undertaken the 12 interviews.
 

A similar situation arose recently when a hiring manager contacted us after spending a day interviewing six candidates for a senior account manager role. Two didn’t show up, two were no good at all and the remaining two were outside possibilities.  We were able to provide one ‘near perfect’ candidate, properly briefed and keen on the role, who is now going successfully through the interview process.

Our skill is in presenting the right person for the right job, a job that will have been described to them and for which their suitability will have been checked.  Client feedback is undertaken with all assignments and our clients and candidates feel PHSS is the best at checking this suitability.

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