Client Tips

You are entitled to decide which agents you want to work with! If you receive the same CV from one or more recruitment company, you have the legal right to decide which supplier you want to see the candidate through.

You can choose based on who sent the CV first if you want to, but there is no legal justification for that. You can make your choice based on the fees you pay, or you can choose who to deal with based on your relationship with a particular agent, or you can choose based on any other factor. It is totally up to you and you should never allow an agent to bully you in your decision making.

In those rare situations where an agency gets heavy handed or aggressive, the client company has no obligation to justify to any agent, why they have made the decision to give the interview to the agent of their choice.

However, once you have requested an interview from an agent then you are committed to that agency for that candidate.

Starting the interview is a crucial element to the whole process; you want to come across as open and likeable, but you also want to be assertive and in control. If you go with the classic starting point of 'Tell me about yourself' you could suffer 15 minutes of misery whilst the candidate waffles on about the most irrelevant aspects of their career.

Or you could talk about your company but that is delaying the moment of getting them to talk. How about 'Tell me about the best aspects of your last/current role'. It gives the candidate an opportunity to be positive and sell their most recent experience, but limits the discussion to their last job.

Telephone interviews are as important as real interviews; don't forget to make the call and make it at the time you have booked.

Telephone interviews are frequently part of the recruitment process, but they are quite commonly forgotten or missed - they just don't seem as important as a face to face meeting. For a candidate waiting for 30 minutes in a car, or on their own in a meeting room, these are the longest 30 minutes of their day. The natural reaction is to blame the interviewer and brand the interviewer's company as having a cavalier attitude.

When you are conducting telephone interviews, set up a convenient time and try to not to miss it.

Selling your job at interview. Before meeting any candidates you should write down what technical skills the candidate will be exposed to in the first 12 months; make sure to include any new software you will buy. Then list all the projects they will work on and the roles they will be exposed to. Now you have a list of technologies, roles and projects, which makes for great interview discussions. 

Next, think about one successful recruit in a similar role to the one you are hiring for, what the role was when they joined your company and what they have achieved and learnt since then. 

During the interviews, go through technologies, projects, roles, prospects with each candidate before they leave their first interview with you; you never know what will interest them so cover all the bases.

HOW IS THE MARKET?

Ambis is up 196% January to May this year as against last year. But then last year was grim.

2010 is going to be a lot busier than last year for recruitment of skilled staff who can be deployed on projects or who can start providing application support quickly. Whilst there are still people available on the market the swing from 'available immediately' to 'currently employed' candidates is sudden and dramatic. Clients planning ahead for 2010 need to allocate 6-8 weeks to get someone onboard and they should consider putting aside some money for training. My tip would be to negotiate with your training providers early and tie up a deal for the whole year.