For any product or service that one can buy, there are several levels of cost and quality to choose from. In our lives outside work, we’re generally not surprised to get what we pay for. We don’t expect luxury car quality, options, and durability, for example, from an entry-level vehicle. In the world of business, however, it’s fairly common to choose the lowest bid. Is that always the smart choice?
We’ll come back to that question, but with your indulgence, there are a few stories from just the last few months that I’d like to share with you.
The first concerns a fairly common situation for us: a ‘needle in a haystack’ assignment, in which the client was looking for a candidate with several skills and experiences that are quite rare. The difference in this case is that when they came to us, the client had already been trying to recruit for this position for upwards of two months, working with a different firm. The new hire they were looking for wouldn’t be just an additional resource, they would be a central figure in several lines of business. That being the case, in those two months, the company had pushed back two critical projects and completely shelved a third. This ongoing situation had already cost the company significant revenue, so when we began discussions, the need was urgent to say the least.
We jumped into action right away, and I’m very happy to report that – with some very creative sourcing and fortuitous timing – we were fairly quickly able to identify two candidates that had the capabilities and experience we were looking for. Both progressed through the interviews, and one accepted the company’s offer at the beginning of March. (At the culmination of the search, the client had still never received a single qualified candidate from the first firm.)
The second instance concerns a different company, a relatively new client for us. This company had been working with another recruiting firm for a year or two, and had hired a handful of candidates through them. Overall, they were fairly happy with the service. At least, they had been, until one day when a senior member of their engineering staff submitted her resignation. She mentioned in passing that she had been connected with the opportunity through that recruitment firm; the same one they’d been using to hire candidates.
To be fair, there was never a written agreement in place preventing the firm from representing candidates from the client company. That said, the company felt that it was a breach of ethics for them to have approached their former staff person. We agree, and based on what we’ve heard, it’s unlikely the company will be working with that recruitment firm again anytime soon.
The last of the three stories is a bit more complicated. The company in this case has been a client of ours since the start of Excelsis. Someone in the company had thought it a good idea to broaden their supplier network – an absolutely fair decision, and we certainly don’t have an issue with competition. Ultimately, they hired a candidate from another firm. That candidate, however, didn’t stay. Only a month after starting in the job, they were recruited away to a different company. The firm had offered a guarantee, and our client went back to them, looking for them to provide a replacement as per the terms of that guarantee.
That was nearly three months ago. In several conversations with the client, they’ve been understandably frustrated. To be fair, a recruitment is never easy, but – in their view – the original firm’s heart just doesn’t seem to be in it. Our client feels somewhat ‘trapped’: they need the position filled, but feel locked in to filling it with the candidate they’re promised under the guarantee.
Working with the client, we came up with a solution to mitigate their risk. There was a vacancy coming up in a team adjacent to the one with the open position. We developed a position description that – should the other firm be successful in the replacement – would allow a new hire to fit well into the position that was coming up. If the replacement took much longer, however, candidates we identified could also be considered for that original role. At this point, we still don’t know for certain which role the successful candidate will ultimately fill. The candidates we’ve identified are in their final stages of the interview process for the new position, and the original one – the job for which a replacement is owed – still hasn’t been filled.