Caring about candidate quality

20-Aug-2008

A newly launched association of social care recruiters is campaigning to ensure that clients get the right candidates. However, managed service vendors in the sector have given their proposals a mixed response. Colin Cottell investigates

Candidate quality has long been a thorny subject in social care recruitment but the recent launch of the Association of Social Work Employment Businesses (ASWEB) has brought the issue to a head.

Following a recent meeting in London, Andrew Thorne, chairman of ASWEB and managing director of Backstop, a specialist recruitment agency providing social workers to the criminal justice system, spoke of members' concerns that clients were not receiving the right quality of candidates.

He said this was a particular issue given the vital and sensitive role played by ASWEB's candidates in working with some of the most vulnerable people in society. "Recruiting social workers is very different to recruiting temporary admin staff or gardeners," he said.

Managed service vendor role

Thorne said a particular bugbear for ASWEB was the role played by managed service vendors (MSVs). He said that one big problem was that, contractually, agencies were not able to talk to managers in local authorities about the positions and had to liaise through the vendor. This made the job of supplying the right people more difficult, he argued.

Thorne said that as a result of dissatisfaction with MSVs, local authority managers were by-passing MSVs and contacting recruiters direct.

He highlighted how agencies that did talk direct to managers risked being "thrown off" contracts, something his own agency had been threatened with.

Thorne said ASWEB had recently held meetings with three of the main MSVs in the sector — Matrix Supply Chain Management, Comensura and Carlisle Managed Solutions — about how to resolve the issue.

He said ASWEB had put forward proposals to create a 'super tier' of agencies, which could have direct contact with recruiting managers. However, he accepted that this should not be a free-for-all.

"You cannot have agencies phoning up local authority managers saying 'we have this candidate, are you interested?'. Agencies won't be selling candidates. It will be managers contacting agencies telling them they have got this vacancy."

Thorne said that the new arrangements would be self-regulating, with any agencies failing to meet the standards set by ASWEB being thrown out of the association.

MSV response

So what has been the response of the MSVs in the sector and how is the situation likely to pan out over the next few months?

Thorne said he had been disappointed by Comensura's response. "They talk about quality of service but they don't seem to be interested. They are not able to see beyond their business model and are only driven by the bottom line."

However, in a statement Comensura said it welcomed "any initiative which improves the quality of temporary staff in the market", and that it "constantly works with its clients and suppliers to ensure that the best candidates are put forward for a particular role".

The statement continued: "At the heart of our business process is a balanced scorecard approach to managing suppliers, which measures quality of candidates against criteria defined by our clients.

"Moreover, we regularly audit all of our agencies' suppliers to ensure contractual and legislative compliance and the representations that an agency makes as to the suitability of a particular worker."

However, according to Thorne, some MSVs are more open to ASWEB's suggestions, with Matrix in particular "prepared to listen".

Indeed, the good news as far as ASWEB is concerned is that Matrix may already have moved some way towards ASWEB's position. Julian Young, chief executive of Matrix, told Recruiter that he supported first-tier suppliers being able to talk directly to managers. "I think it is entirely appropriate for an agency that has a proven ability to meet quality standards to have a conversation with the line manager.

"A good quality recruitment agency needs to be able to understand the subtle nuances of roles, particularly in social care," he added.

Furthermore, Young said that Matrix was planning a periodic forum between itself and its suppliers to talk about issues of common concern.

Stopping short

Lorraine Butler, client relationship manager at Carlisle Managed Solutions, said she supported ASWEB's suggestion to provide a quality check on agencies in addition to Carlisle's own. However, she stopped short of agreeing that recruiters should have an open line to clients, arguing that allowing 16 ASWEB member agencies to phone up could potentially lead to a client being "not being very happy". Indeed, she added: "It would negate the whole reason for having an MSV."

It was better, she argued, that the MSV facilitated contact — for example, when there were particular problems in filling a vacancy.

Given such views, it is clear that ASWEB still has a big job on its hands if its proposals for improving service and candidate quality are to be accepted.

asweb's proposals

• 'Super tier' of recruiters who could contact clients direct
• Self-regulated system in which recruiters who abused this right would be expelled from ASWEB
• Regular auditing of ASWEB's members to ensure adherence to quality standards
  
  

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