What is a Rat Race?

A rat race is multiple rats and one piece of cheese. It’s not a pretty picture.

In recruiting, this happens when you have a client company asking multiple recruiters to work on one requisition. Some clients think that ‘the more eyeballs the better’ but this can be a huge detriment. Here are some of the issues:

1) Annoying the best candidates. Imagine getting 20 recruiters calling you about the same position. (that you had little or no interest in)

2) Making the candidates head swell. Let’s say a candidate is coming to the table and is now a little excited because someone is giving him the opportunity for a bump in pay or position. He has a new sense of ‘feeling wanted.’ Now a third, fourth, fifth recruiter is contacting him for the same job. “hmm”, he thinks, “I must be in better demand than I thought. I think I want more.” Now negotiating with this guy on salary and benefits will get tricky.

3) Mathematical degradation of effort. Ok here goes… Let’s say you send your req to 10 recruiting companies. It’s not the first time that you’ve done this. So they know what to expect. Here is what happens at the recruiting company:

· The recruiting manager offers the req to a seasoned recruiter that understands the job. The ‘pro’ looks at the req, chuckles and says “no way – these guys sent this req to everyone”. He /she says “Give it to a rookie”, because he/she does not want to be in a rat race.

· The recruiting manager gives the req to ‘the rookie’. He/She is excited to have another req to go with the 15 others that he/she has been given to work on.

· The rookie runs an ad in the job boards and goes back to reviewing the resumes that came in from overnight job board action. In a couple days he/she will have candidates for this new req.

· The rookie now starts calling on the candidates that submitted to his/her ad on the boards. Two things come up real quick. 1) The candidates have already submitted to a vaguely similar ad and have been submitted by another recruiter, OR 2) they have not been submitted and the rookie is so excited that he/she has a ‘live fish’ that they don’t do any sort of screening and rush to get the candidate submitted before another recruiter finds them and submits them first.

· Now the hiring company starts to look at the submissions. Hmm – same candidates submitted by multiple companies, candidates that aren’t a good match to the requirement, and candidates with blatant lies on their resumes. “Damn those 3rd party recruiters!”

Ahh, the rat race. Is there a good reason for it? I can’t imagine one. So here’s my tip to hiring managers: Give reqs to one recruiting firm at a time for 15 days. Tell them upfront that you intend on that. I would tell it to them like this “We need one of your most senior recruiter’s attention on this. We will give you 15 days with exclusive access to the req and to the hiring manager. The hiring manager will answer questions about the job, and give you feedback on each candidate immediately. What we would like in return is for you to send us your 5 best candidates, prescreened and well documented. After 15 days – we will decide whether to keep on the same plan or to bring in a different recruiter to work on the req.”

As a professional recruiter I would have a better feeling about the client now. They are stepping up to the plate and expecting quality results. If I was the recruiter getting this call - I’ll be putting in 10-12 hours per day into this req until I have found them 5-7 quality candidates. I’m going to take the time to write and run quality ads (for semi passive candidates) and I’m going to dig into my referral network and into high quality companies for qualified candidates that need inspiration to ‘move’.

In the technical arena the hiring cycle is about 90 days for positions above 90k per year. Coming up with great candidates in the first 15 days can close this down.



What is a Rat Race? - To learn more about this author, visit JR Fent's Website.

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