10 Hiring Secrets That Executive Recruiters Wish Employers Knew
I helped a new client recently, an employer who had limited experience working with executive recruiting agencies. They asked me a great question: as someone who recruits for a living, what advice did I have for them? Funny you should ask! As we partner together to fill your critical roles, here are 10 hiring secrets so you can “help us help you” — i.e., make better hires, faster.
1. Make Sure Your Salary Is Competitive
If you are offering anything less than the median, it will be very difficult for us to attract high-quality candidates for you. Worse yet, we may manage to land one, only for you to lose them when another opportunity comes along paying more. (At which point, any money you saved on salary is offset by the cost of training a replacement.) If you are in the Food & Beverage industry, you can download Kinsa’s annual salary guide here.
2. Offer Growth Opportunities
There are a lot of employers out there hiring right now, so candidates have choices, and they know it. Most are looking for chances to advance their career. Remaining open to offering a candidate a chance to take the next step in their career (e.g., from Assistant Manager or Supervisor to Manager) is a great way to attract candidates with a lot of growth potential. In addition, this strategy helps keep the new hire more affordable!
3. Expedite Your Hiring Processes
Or lose candidates to the many other employers who have streamlined their processes. The best candidates often have the shortest shelf-life. While working around your job candidate’s schedule, the faster the process, the better. Read our 6 Best Practices for Your Hiring Process here.
4. Keep an Open Mind
“While you were looking for the perfect resume, you overlooked the ideal candidate.”
5. Offer Remote Work When It Makes Sense
Since many people worked mostly or exclusively from home during the pandemic, they have proven it can be done effectively, and many people have developed a taste for it. For any job that can be worked remotely, keep in mind that you will dramatically expand your talent pool by opening it up to remote workers. Kinsa has a huge national proprietary database of candidates. Here are 5 positions you should consider a remote work option for.
6. Give Feedback ASAP
For every candidate your recruiter submits to you, provide specific feedback ASAP – what you liked AND what you didn’t like. This enables us to continuously refine our search for the best possible candidates.
7. Exclusive Is Best
Many employers think they will get the best results by throwing a job to multiple external recruiters. Quite the opposite is true – exclusive is best.
- First, we prioritize positions we know we alone are working, because we know you are counting on us to find your new hire.
- Second, when we reach out to candidates only to discover they have already talked to another recruiter about the same position, it makes everyone (including you the employer) look awkward. It looks like none of us have our ducks in a row, and it may spook that great candidate into looking elsewhere for their new career opportunity because you must not be interested in their resume that may, or may not have been, submitted by another recruiter a few weeks ago…
Check out the Kinsa Recruiting Process here.
8. Make Hiring a Priority
In some organizations, culture dictates that hiring managers treat recruiting and hiring as their #1 responsibility. In other organizations, hiring managers may treat it as an inconvenience. It’s very evident to candidates where your organization falls on that spectrum! And that has a big impact on their candidate experience and their desire to work for you. How can you incentivize hiring managers to treat hiring as a priority?
9. Consider Relocation Offers
If you want an exceptional candidate and/or have fairly exacting requirements, chances are good you will have to look at relocating a candidate to your market. This is not a good area to economize. You want to cover 100% of the costs. Convincing someone to go through all of the work that relocation entails is a HUGE “ask.” It’s not reasonable to expect them to also take a big financial hit, so this is a good way to scare off good candidates. In a recent survey of food and beverage professionals, when asked if they would be willing to relocate, 44% said they would relocate for the right job. Read more here.
10. Write the Best Job Description
The War For Talent has heated up again, and the talent pool has dwindled. It’s in your best interest to rigorously assess your job descriptions and narrow it down to requirements that are truly essential versus what’s “nice to have.” We can help you do this!
Treating your recruiter as a partner rather than a vendor is the key to getting the most value out of the relationship.
Food and Beverage Industry Executive Recruiters
Whether you are a professional seeking a new executive food & beverage position, or an industry employer ready to make a key hire, we have the insights and recruiting capability you need. Contact us today.
This blog was written by George Blomgren, Kinsa Group Recruiting Manager. Connect with him on LinkedIn.