Recruiting The Best Talent Is A Long-term Relationship

The most important part of a recruiter's role is to quickly establish and develop strong, long-lasting relationships with candidates and clients. Many recruiters take a short-cut to secure the sale, but others take the long-view, building partnerships.

Erin Kirtley, regional manager of specialist Newcastle-based recruitment consultancy Concept, believes that in a world of salesfocused, competitive recruiters, her team stands out by helping clients find great staff, and talented candidates find their perfect job.

Concept has been in business for more than 17 years and that success is due to the long-standing relationships the consultancy has with clients – covering creative, digital and marketing companies across the North East, Scotland and more recently from a new office in Milton Keynes.

Erin explained: “These relationships really work for our clients, we get to know the company, we understand what they need and over time, these jobs become easier for us to fill, enabling us to work quicker and more efficiently to fill urgent vacancies.”

This is a view endorsed by many of Concept’s longstanding digital clients. Tom Etherington, director at Newcastle-based Evolved, said: “Recruitment is one of the hardest things to get right for any business, but particularly if you are a small company that’s growing quickly. You not only have to find enough candidates with the right skills/experience, they need to be able to slot in well and hit the ground running.

“If one hire doesn’t work out, you can find yourself further back than before you started recruiting, so working with a partner that understands our business is absolutely crucial.

“The sort of qualities and traits that we look for in candidates can’t be found from just looking through CVs or LinkedIn profiles. So, regardless of how many emails are sent over by recruitment companies, there are always a lot of questions still to answer and it can be a time-consuming process to go through.

“Concept have really spent the time getting to know our business, including understanding our values and future plans, and put steps in place so that any potential candidate sent our way already ticks a lot of boxes.

“They are also able to provide a detailed view of what the company is like and our culture, rather than just what you can read on our website, meaning all of the candidates that we go on to interview already know a lot about us and are excited about the potential opportunity.”

Recruitment is rarely easy for any company or organisation. Concept handles the difficulties that come with resourcing staff and aims to solve the problems for all clients.

Erin explained: “Our partners utilise us, our industry knowledge and experience to help find a candidate they want to employ. We manage their employer brand, work on their behalf, adapt and advise where required. We become an extension of the company and act as they would to recruit the best possible staff.”

Everyone at Concept has been hired for their commercial experience within the creative, digital or marketing sectors. This industry knowledge can be invaluable to a partner. Concept regularly offers advice and opinion on candidates, recruitment and retainment, provide relevant resources and knowledge regularly clients.

“As we understand the industry, we can introduce other relevant partners and formulate other potentially beneficial relationships beyond our own,” said Erin.

“When we do a lot of recruitment with one partner, we would be able to negotiate the rate of the fee. This is a huge advantage to the client and regular, frequent work is a huge advantage for us too. Working well over a long period of time with a partner, allows each party time to build upon the trust in the relationship.”

Concept aims to be the go-to service when partners need a key member of staff, market insight or employment advice.

Short and term and long-term relationships are important to invest time and effort in, and both parties will in time, see the benefit of working together.