Recruitment consultants are looking for the best in the market; rather than, people who are just ‘in the market’. That significant difference – between people who are looking for jobs (typically because they are out of work) and those who may be approached while in work with a vacancy – was one of the learnings from the latest OSPAs thought leadership webinar chaired by founder Prof Martin Gill of Perpetuity Research, yesterday afternoon.
It was said at the end of the hour’s webinar, by Brett Ennals, of Cento, whose UK recruitment consultancy is on the electronic and technical side of security. He and others on the panel – Peter French, pictured, of London-based SSR Personnel; and in Cleveland, Ohio, Aaron Kutz, Practice Leader at Direct Recruiters, Inc – took on the question of why hire a recruitment firm to find a new hire, when you could post on social media and it attracts quality candidates.
Brett suggested that a recruitment service is not just about gathering lots of applicants, and picking one; but getting the ‘culture fit’ right; that is, a new recruit who fits in well with the employer and ‘stays for a lot longer’. “If it was as simple as posting on social media, you wouldn’t need recruiters.” Most hirers (as when they contract out any service) don’t have the time to invest in finding the right people, he went on. It’s down to the recruiter of have contacts, and to bring them to the hirer quickly.
In the US, Aaron Kutz agreed: “I tell all our clients, if you can find the person on your own, in your personal network, post on Linkedin, go for it.” As he added, why pay a fee for a recruiter, when you hire someone you met for a coffee the week before?! A recruitment consultant, then, is for the hard to fill roles; and what Aaron called ‘a passive candidate’ may not respond to a post on social media, or a job advert on an internet posts. It takes the efforts of recruitment consultants to bring those people already in work who may not be looking to move. Aaron added that during the uncertainty of the 2020 pandemic, people in work may not be as willing to have ‘an initial conversation’ towards making a change of job.
That touches on another theme of the webinar; the state of the security jobs market, and redundancies. What the men said confirmed anecdotes and postings on Linkedin of people losing security jobs and more general business news of retailers and other household business names making big job cuts.
(And for more on the apparent and real costs of hiring a recruitment consultant versus DIY recruiting, see also a blog on the Cento website.)
Next webinar
The next webinar is on Tuesday, November 10, titled ‘what’s in a name’ about the confusion of security job titles. You can register to attend for free at https://theospas.com/thought-leadership-webinars/. You can listen to the scores of past webinars, that began on March 31 and are due to run until at least the year’s end.
