Do recruiters know who is genuinely good at what they do?

• February 01, 2023

I was recently approached about going back into an IT leadership role, it was tempting but I'm still here banging the drum about using a recruiter who has in-depth knowledge of IT roles.

I'm brilliant, honest Gov

During the process of being tempted back to the world of IT, I saw a valuable reminder of just why I have set up in the cut-throat world of recruitment. Why you may ask? Well it is quite simple, during the whole (and lengthy) interview process, at no point was any attempt made to check if I am actually good at what I used to do....whether I was good, average or just a good talker is still the secret of those whom I used to work with! Yes - I held good IT leadership roles, yes - I held them for substantial periods of time, but is that really all that it should take to assess if I would have been the next great leader for that company? I may have been merely competent or worse, please do not comment on that if you know me well.

Setting the level

We all know that adding to your teams could not be more infuential in ensuring your success, get it wrong and not only does your team become less effective but you will lose valuable time dealing with the fall out from a bad hire. That bad hire is never the fault of the recruiter as they are highly unlikely to have made the final hire decision, that is one for your own teams who should know what good looks like. However, what the recruiter does is feed your team with candidates that set the tone for what is avialble in the market place. So how does the recruiter know how good their candidates are? If you are lucky (and pay the right fee) they may use tools for technical capability testing, they may even attend industry events and know the buzz word bingo, but does that give them the ability to know what good really looks like? I say not.

Feed your team the best

There are so many factors to be considered in getting the right new hire in to your team;

• The skills required for the role
• Technical proficiency
• Diligence, attitude and character
• Knowledge of how to work as part of a team
• Team and culture fit
• Understanding of how their role works as part of the bigger picture
• Emotional inteligence

The above are just a few factors that most people can dig into, however what is missing is that ability to check the level of "competence" in these and many other factors. To check for competence you must have the ability to have frank discussions around some experience based scenarios, otherwise you are testing candidates against a set of standard answers that even the poorest of candidates actually know the answers to.

Time is money, only interview candidates who will enhance your team

During my time in IT, when hiring, often I went into the interview day full of optimism and then came out deflated. Why? Well it is simple, the agents I used (some very big names too) often didn't either have the experience/knowledge or didn't spend the time getting down to detail with the candidates who they sent through, a good looking CV was merely enough. For me, that is just not good enough, you are not paying them to get lucky, you are paying them to provide the baseline that will ensure your time is well spent . Time is money, if you waste your time on poor candidates with great CVs, then you are just paying twice in the recruitment process.

Trust me, I don't like mediocre IT professionals

If you would like me to ensure you add to your team's capability whilst only paying once, please get in touch. I do interview all candidates that I present personally, I wouldn't have it any other way.

des@desscanlanitrecruitment.co.uk