Recruiters often get a bad rep. But when it comes to hiring staff, they can save you lots of time finding the right candidate.

In this guide, we'll look at the advantages of working with a specialist asbestos recruiter to find staff for your business, the matching process, and how costs are calculated and deducted.

Why Work With Recruiters?

Why spend your precious money on a recruitment agency when you could advertise the job position yourself? Well, it turns out there are some real benefits to outsourcing this work:

• It frees up your time. They do the heavy lifting; so you can work on urgent, money-making tasks
  Recruiting is a full time job. Advertising, screening, shortlisting, and referencing candidates takes a lot of time and can be quite a long process. If you're doing this yourself, it takes you away from your day job and more urgent tasks.
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• A bigger pool of candidates; Recruiters have thousands of contacts on their databases, so you'll have a large pool of potential candidates
  Recruitment agencies spend years building their database and have thousands of potential candidates relating to the asbestos industry, at all levels – allowing them to instantly contact both passive and active candidates about vacancies.
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• ‍Recruiters have real market insights; allowing you to attract top talent in the industry
  Recruiters spend their entire working day liaising with people in the industry, ranging from candidates to business owners, giving them insight into market rates, competitors, internal business structures, company benefits, progression schemes, etc. This insight allows recruiters to advise you of the best route to take when recruiting, and the remuneration package to attract top talent in the industry.
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• If you build long-term relationships with recruiters, over time, they'll get better at selling you as an employer
  Over time, you'll build good relationships with the recruitment agency. When they understand your business, senior team, company structure, and company values, they can sell you as an employer to candidates in the right way, with your company values in mind.

What Will it Cost?

The cost of working with a recruitment agency depends on whether you're hiring a permanent or temporary staff. It'll vary from one recruiter to another. But generally speaking, here's what to expect:

• Permanent placements – you pay recruiters a fixed percentage for the first year
  You'll pay a fixed percentage of the candidates first year salary. After that, you have no further obligations.
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• ‍Temporary/freelance placements – recruiters add a fixed cost to the candidates day rate
  You'll pay a fixed rate on top of the candidates day rate. So the recruitment agency effectively inflates their costs and scrapes their bit off the top.

What's The Process?

Charlotte McEvan from specialist asbestos recruitment agency, Morgan King Environmental explains their process for finding job candidates for an asbestos surveying company:

"When we are given a vacancy from a client, we can contact up to 100 candidates within a certain radius of the vacancy. We contact candidates already on our database and also new applicants from job advertisements."

Step 1 - Telephone Interview:

"We conduct a 45-minute to 1-hour long interview with all candidates. During this call we cover:

• Previous work history
• Candidate expectations
• Current/desired package
• Reference information
• Candidate referrals
• Market relevant information such as who else they have interviewed with etc. This helps us to understand the market so we can advise clients on their competitors."

"We then shortlist candidates and conduct references. We gather 2 references from those within the industry so we have a well rounded view on their work ethic and performance."

"Candidates are then submitted to the relevant roles. We manage the process right up until they start the position and throughout the first few months of their role."

Step 2 - Matching Companies and Candidates:

"We match candidates to employers based on:

• Company information: Company history, values, growth plans, structure, culture etc.
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• Vacancy information: Job description, responsibilities, type of work, career progression
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• Package information: Salary, bonuses, holiday, travel time, vehicle type, pension, and any other corporate benefits
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• Client expectations: Essential and desirable qualifications/experience, locality to job, culture fit etc.

"The questions we ask clients when qualifying a role mirror the questions we ask candidates when we qualify them (as listed above). This helps us to match the two together and identify any potential mismatches."

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