One of the main difficulties of being a business owner is ensuring that you have the right staff to bring you the most success and provide a service that you can be proud of. But what happens when you lose a member of your team to an offer they cannot refuse. What do you do next? There are so many options of how to make your next hire, but also so many factors that require consideration too. Time, Money, Effort, as well as the impact on your workload.

So how do you go about finding your next perfect employee? Well, how hard can it be…? Time to write up a winning job description, put it on the job boards, put your feet up and wait for the candidates to start rolling in. How could anybody not want to join you after reading that amazing job specification!

1,2,3… they begin to come in one by one, all of a sudden, your inbox is becoming inundated with people queuing up to join your firm. Surely now all you have to do is read the CV’s, line up a few meetings and select your next Block Manager.

Carpenter? Supermarket Assistant? Racing Car Driver? Did they not see that I am explicitly looking for an experienced Block Manager who can hit the ground running?

Now you have found out what all Block Management Recruiters know: very rarely will the right person for your job ever apply for it. Do not fear. You have over 3,000 connections on LinkedIn and lots of industry acquaintances that are always posting online. As you quickly scour through your long list of connections you find just the right person. They live in town, they have over 5 years’ experience as a Block Manager, they have worked for some of the biggest Brands and you can see that they know their stuff! Time to send an InMail and wait for their CV in response (that’s if you have a paid for account on LinkedIn, currently £600 per year)

3 days later: they have clearly read your message, they are online right now! No problem, let’s be more proactive and more direct, they have their number on their profile so it’s time to give them a call. Answerphone. Answerphone. Answerphone. 100 calls, 30 InMail’s and 15 emails later and still nothing.

The frustrations begin to creep in and now you have a backlog of calls and emails you need to respond to. But suddenly you have the perfect candidate, you interview them, you have finally found the right person. After interviewing them the second time you call them straight away to offer them the position. They have said they would love to join you and they will be handing in their notice on Monday. The day comes, you await their call to confirm their start dates, but you are met with something quite different. They have received a counter offer from their current employer and they wish to stay where they are. But what about all the problems they said they had, the lack of flexibility, no progression pathway, no benefit package – all the things you had offered to provide them with.

Unfortunately, you are now 30 days down the line and thanks to the ever-present frustration of a candidate driven market you are back to square one.

Meanwhile, you have spent every day searching for candidates, reviewing CV’s, making phone calls, approaching prospects and all that time and effort has somehow bore no fruit. Don’t forget about the stress, disappointment and huge backlog of work you now must power through.

My Dad has always refused to decorate his house himself which has always confused me - why would you spend so much money on a decorator when you could do it yourself for a mere fraction of the cost? Because when decorating his house (and I cannot stress how poor a job he would do if he did it himself), he could be losing out on valuable time that he could be doing a good job on his own business. Without a doubt he would also have to pay for a decorator to rectify the horrific job that he would do as well.

The moral of the story is: There can be real value in using outside specialists to assist you with your needs.

What you miss out on:

1. The inside knowledge that an agency possesses when they specialise in their industry.
2. If you make the wrong hire, there is no security of a Rebate Period to compensate for your lost time and effort in recruitment.
3. The promotion of your company from a new outside source, someone who can be a real advocate for your brand.
4. Your time is money. Potential lost business opportunities, wasted time and a backlog of work.
5. The extensive and focused targeting of relevant potential candidates. Specialist recruitment firms have an engaged database which reaches much further than job boards or LinkedIn, giving you a much wider talent pool to choose from.
6. Experienced negotiators with knowledge on how best to present offers to candidates and see them through to the start date.  
7. A potential faster turnaround, due to the recruitment of this role being the Agencies prime focus.  

My top tips for in-house recruitment:

Offer a refreshing, fast and enjoyable candidate experience. Make sure to sell the company and the role on offer during your interview process, after all, you want these candidates to want to join you! Check out our Interview Tips.

Don’t forget, in this competitive market to make sure you can make a quick decision, so you don’t miss out on the best talent. Check out our blog on How to Secure the Best Talent in a Candidate Driven Market.

Ensure you are ever present at relevant industry events to make sure you are building up yours & your company’s reputation whilst speaking to relevant people. Check out our Networking Tips.

Make LinkedIn your Bible. You must build up a strong group of connections, be active & add value to others.  

If you end up banging your head against the wall, make sure you call the Block Recruit Team to see how we can help you. After all, you only pay a fee if we find you the right person.