4 crucial reasons to hire through a specialist recruiter
When it comes to finding the best new technical professional talent in today’s candidate-driven market, it makes sense to use all the tools at your disposal.
The most powerful of these tools is partnering up with a specialist recruitment agency.
Compared to generalist agencies that cover a broad range of industries, specialists have the sector knowledge, experience and contacts needed to find top calibre employees to fill your vacancies. These strong networks in particular put them in a good position to see recruitment trends in different markets.
Why else is this niche expertise vital to recruit new members of your team? Let’s take a look at some reasons.
1 A stronger candidate shortlist
If your business is looking to fill a specialist role with specific requirements, you expect to be sent a shortlist of relevant candidates with the necessary niche skills.
Although a generalist recruitment agency may have a huge pool of candidates on their books, you may feel the talent you’re offered doesn’t consistently hit the mark.
But specialist agencies only take on candidates with the right skills and experience for their sectors - just as the professionals you’re looking for tend to register just with that type of agency.
Industry contacts also means they’ll have nurtured relationships with passive candidates; potential candidates in other roles who aren’t actively looking for a new job unless the right vacancy comes along.
2 Sector-specific salary knowledge
A generalist recruitment agency can’t be expected to know the current wage levels for every job in every sector, as this type of industry-specific information is hard to gage accurately.
Yet engaging the best candidate on a salary that suits them as well as your business is a vital if you want to recruit top calibre talent. Having a job offer turned down because of salary expectations is a waste of time and resources.
Each team member in a specialist recruiter is usually an expert in their industry. This kind of expertise means up-to-date knowledge of sector salaries - plus, crucially, what competitors are paying staff in similar roles.
Skills shortages in many sectors mean that it’s a candidate-driven job market. So employers who can attract the best talent are the ones who can offer candidates not just an attractive salary, but also the benefits they want. As specialist recruiters talk to candidates every day they’re more likely to have insights on current trends.
3 Specialist recruitment tools
In today’s digital-driven recruitment sector, finding top talent with niche skills calls for the latest tools.
Specialist agencies are more likely to have in-depth knowledge of platforms like LinkedIn Recruiter, which includes advanced search filters and spotlights to narrow down candidates most suitable for technical professional roles.
At RHL, we also use power business intelligence (BI) software which draws statistics from our CRM database and converts this data to valuable insights. We can tell at a glance the latest trends in who’s hiring, where, and how much they’re paying - and are then able to take action accordingly, advising clients on the state of their sector.
4 Targeted job ads
Whether on a website, on social media or on commercial job boards, online job adverts are usually the first interaction a recruitment agency has with potential talent. And for technical and professional sectors in particular, these adverts must often fight with hundreds of others for candidates’ time and attention.
The only way for adverts to rank highly in a job search is with in-depth knowledge of exactly what candidates in these sectors are searching for, and what’s most relevant to them.
Specialist recruiters have the sector expertise needed to laser-target job adverts to appeal to professionals most qualified for the role.
This is certainly about strategic use of search engine optimisation (SEO) and specific keywords and key phrases. But it’s also about knowing exactly what type of candidate will be looking for this kind of opportunity, and selling the employer as much as the role. As a thriving business in a technical sector, you need a brand ambassador as much as a recruiter - which is why it pays to call in the experts.
Get in touch
At RHL, we find talented candidates for technical roles at all levels every day. Our focus is placing candidates with clients in multiple technical professional sectors from engineering consultancy to energy, property to automotive, manufacturing to transport (you can see a full list here).
If you’d like to find out how our RHL recruitment consultants can use their expertise to fill your next professional vacancy, please contact us.