Robert Kenward, Fitability® recruiter at YOU Search & Select and founder of TheHub. Jobs, outlines his ideal recruitment manifesto.
Recruitment gets a bad rep and, unfortunately, a lot of the time it’s deserved. I’ve devised a six-point manifesto to restore some credibility to the whole sector and, in turn, make life easier for everyone.
1. Replace “what is your current salary?” with “what salary are you looking for?”
It should be illegal to ask a candidate their current salary, period. Their current salary should not influence their worth to you. Imagine this all-too-common scenario: if your role has a salary bracket of £50-60k, and your chosen candidate is on £30k, you may be tempted to offer them £40k, because it will represent a nice £10k raise for them and everyone wins right? Wrong. The job is worth £50-60k, so you would be underpaying by 20-30%. If you are paying them 20% less than the role deserves, does that mean you will also reduce the workload and responsibility by 20%?
Of course you won’t. If you think the candidate can do the role, then pay them what the role commands. The gender/ethnicity pay gap is real, and this approach only keeps it there and widens it.
2. All job adverts must have a salary banding
Employers often cite they don’t want staff to know what their colleagues are on, but salary bandings make things so much more transparent and fairer. An ideal situation would be to use the local and national government approach which has grades and pay bandings, and clear levels within each grade laying out what the employee must achieve to reach each of the levels.
Salary bandings will also reduce the number of inappropriate applicants applying for a role, too.
3. Recruiters must reply to all applicants
Some recruiters or hiring teams have caveats on their job adverts “if you haven’t had a response within 72 hours then you have been unsuccessful”, or “we only respond to successful candidates”. I think that’s hugely unprofessional, and it can affect people’s mental health. Treat applicants as human beings. It’s easy to create an email template to respond individually, and if you’re getting a poor match of applicant, take a look at what you’re putting in the advert, include a salary bracket and see what you can do to hone down and ease your workload.
4. If employers insist on giving the role to multiple agencies, ensure all agencies only submit applicants on the same day
This will stop the mad rush to claim ‘candidate ownership’ by recruiters who send over CVs quickly before their competition does.
Picture the scenario; recruiter one will spend time contacting a candidate, explaining the role, the employer’s background, assessing them and ensuring they are keen to apply. Recruiter two simply finds some CVs on a website or in their CRM and submits them immediately. Recruiter two will ‘claim’ that candidate because they submitted the CV first, despite recruiter one taking an ethical and robust approach. This makes contingency recruitment a far more level playing field, as you can guarantee all applicants know why they’ve been submitted and by whom.
5. Make it illegal for recruitment agencies to submit a candidate’s CV without prior written email agreement
My rules would state that the recruiter must have a documented agreement stating the candidate is happy for the recruiter to represent them on that opportunity. This stops over-zealous recruiters falsely claiming a candidate and potentially wasting everyone’s time, by putting forward people who aren’t available or interested in a role. It also stops the dreadful tactic of ‘phishing’ whereby a recruiter will spam a CV to a database, and should anyone come back, the recruiter then contacts the CV owner to say, “we have a great opportunity for you”.
6. Three-month 100% rebate should be standard for all recruiters
If a recruiter doesn’t provide a three-month 100% rebate, they either don’t trust themselves, or the hiring company hasn’t provided enough information to trust their own decision making. Recruiters must take responsibility for their work. They might say “but the final hire is not our decision, it’s the client’s,” but the recruiter should only put forward the candidates they think match the company’s requirements based on the information they’ve gleaned. I work retained, so I provide a six-month 100% rebate because I’m confident in my Fitability® approach and the hire is a team effort, so I should take some of the responsibility.
Recruitment used to be a respected management skill, not just a ‘side of the desk’ job that anyone can do alongside their usual role, and external recruiters used to be seen as a trusted aide, a confidant and consultant rather than the CV shifters a lot have now become.
Recruitment isn’t hard, but it’s easy to get wrong. We all need to step up to take responsibility to make things better all round.
According to PWC, 92% of candidates report having a bad experience while job hunting; the most common complaints are of recruiters and companies who they speak to and never hear from again and of employers that drag out the recruiting process. Saying that, the recruitment sector in the UK has revenues of over £40bn, so it’s not going away.
Recruitment isn’t broken, it just needs a few tweaks, so who’s with me?
