Recruitment consultancies are in danger of irritating existing and potential clients with their persistent and salesy approach.

Client’s HR departments are finding it time consuming having to brief several recruiters with one job, and with an increasing number of multiple agency briefs being worked on, a race ensues, which leads to some cutting corners and sending CVs before briefing the candidates, even though they claim not to.

This hamster wheel of more recruitment consultancies working harder for fewer briefs must be managed much more efficiently. It has become a bit of a free-for-all where reputation, skill and experience don’t even come into the equation.

The market is changing and, as recruiters, we have to change with it. Traditional recruitment methods are inefficient in this challenging climate. A selective approach, a level of exclusivity and competitive fixed fees that are very competitive with advertising — and nothing to pay if we don’t deliver — is a necessary compromise that the recruitment industry would do well to consider.

Efficiency is what separates businesses that survive from those that don’t. The answer is restructured and reduced fixed fees that will not affect the quality of service that clients rely on, but give them added value and be more cost-efficient than the print and online media advertising
tools clients are increasingly turning to as alternatives.

Neville Price
Chief executive, Communications
and PR agency, Price Trace Hawes

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