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Finding a new role can be stressful, whether it’s born out of necessity or simply searching for that new challenge! Fortunately, an industry exists that should help this process go a little smoother. But, there are so many recruiters out there all fighting for your CV, who should represent you?

1. How did they approach you?

The first (and perhaps most obvious) to consider is the method of approach. One thing that can frustrate people is to be bombarded with messages, emails, and calls without being given a reason to be interested or want to chat!

Look out for signs that this recruiter has actually identified you as a relevant candidate.

This could be as simple as them immediately sharing information on a relevant role or detailing why their services are going to be of particular use to you. Whilst receiving a call from an unknown number can sometimes be inconvenient, you should be able to tell in the first 10 seconds whether this recruiter is worth your time.

The age of LinkedIn and the option to tick ‘Open to New Opportunities’ offers recruiters another method of reaching out, but this can sometimes feel a little impersonal.

It’s noticeable when a recruiter has taken the time to really study your profile and add that personal touch in a message or connection request.

2. Have they listened?

Often you will first have a phone call so that the recruiter can understand your situation and experience – this will dictate much of your future relationship.

Are they asking relevant questions to determine what you’re actually looking for?

Your career aspirations and your motivations are hugely important topics to cover if you’re going to find the right job (and it’s evident when a recruiter either hasn’t asked or doesn’t want to know!).

There’s nothing more frustrating than the feeling you’ve not been listened to, and recruiters do sometimes have a reputation for neglecting to understand what’s important to a potential candidate; to simply ‘connect the dots’ and deliver technically relevant candidates to their clients.

But that’s not to say that the technical side isn’t important too.

If they’re not asking appropriate technical questions about your experience and previous roles, then it’s unlikely they’ll be able to provide you with a suitable vacancy (and they certainly might not be the best person to choose to convince companies that you’re a good fit!).

3. Transparency

A successful relationship with a recruiter should be based on honesty from both sides.

A good sign you’ve picked the right one is that they pay attention to your other processes and can justify why they’re doing so.

Often this can seem unimportant, but it’s a key part of a recruiter’s job to really know their candidate’s situation and communicate this to their clients in order to manage everything properly. For example, with this information, they have the ability to introduce urgency to schedule interviews quicker or demonstrate to clients that you’re as good as your CV suggests.

This transparency works both ways though. It’s crucial that you’re honest about your feelings towards roles and companies in order for the recruiter to be able to give you the best chance of securing the one you want.

A good recruiter will be consistently asking you the difficult questions – to best understand your thoughts and (sometimes ever-changing) opinions throughout the process.

4. Advice

The last thing to consider is the advice given by a recruiter.

It’s imperative that you trust your recruiter and the transparency discussed previously should give you the confidence to do so.

Whilst it’s evident that a recruiter will often have their own desired outcome of processes with a candidate, this doesn’t mean they can’t offer useful advice. At the end of the day, it’s in a recruiter’s best interest to find you a place you love and want to stay at.

Admittedly, it’s certainly worth sometimes being wary of advice if it seems pushy or rash, but a recruiter will often have more experience than you regarding interview processes and should have a great understanding of the clients they represent.

You’ve picked the right recruiter when you feel confident they’re advising you to make the decision best for you.

They can often give a different perspective and good foresight regarding potential issues or obstacles throughout the job-search.

Hopefully, this has given you a few things to take into consideration when deciding on your next recruiter. What else do you think is important in a relationship with a recruiter? I’d be really interested to hear people’s thoughts or past experiences, please comment anything relevant down below!

Your tech startup has just received its first round of funding and you’ve been given the go-ahead to scale. It’s the decision you and your team have been dreaming about and it’s finally here. By all means, celebrate your success but come Monday the real fun (chaos) begins.

The nature of investment means your product/project delivery times will come under the microscope, so notwithstanding the need for a bigger (cooler) office, a “Friday afternoon breakout area” or a need to hire more people for the operational side of the business, you need to hire more IT resources e.g. Developers.

How are you going to do it?

Freelancers of course. However, in the fairness of debate let’s deal with what I consider to be an unnecessary and somewhat distorted opinion of freelancers.

“Freelancers…”[FILL IN THE BLANK]

· Cost more money than permanent employees

· Don’t enhance company culture

· Remove the option for skills to stay in-house when they leave

We can go on and on…I get it, I really do, but to support these opinions is to ignore the current context and objectives of your start-up. The fact you’ve got funding means someone believes in your business. You must repay this faith by ensuring they get a return on their investment. To put it simply, you must deliver a marketable product.

While you may argue (fairly) that this is perfectly achievable and not time restrictive enough to have to take on Freelancers, you need to also consider how hard it is to hire experienced permanent IT employees.

So why Freelancers?

1. Efficiency – The No.1 issue facing startups is the hiring of great talent. I’m sure you’ve got an excellent product and it’s essential to believe in the success/growth of your company. However, consider the associated downside of joining a startup.

If you’ve just purchased a new property, relocated countries or started a family for instance, then the following factors are going to work against, rather than for you:

· Low employee numbers

· The uncertainty of future investment

· A small IT development team

· A low public profile

The advantage of the Freelance solution is that it can be scaled up or down. It gives you the freedom to hire people immediately, but the temporary nature of their appointment keeps your decision making flexible. Additionally, your decision to hire permanent employees can then be more reflective of quality rather than just time.

The efficiency of flexible freelance contracts means you also benefit from:

· Short term notice periods

· Flexible working hours

· Longer payment terms

2. Financial Responsibility – Having just received funding you’re technically flush with cash. However, miss a couple of deadlines and hire the wrong permanent employees and you’re in the throes of a cash flow crisis.

Hiring Freelancers gives you greater control of the balance sheet: [y Freelancers] x [y hours] x [y weeks] = Controlled expenditure

Remember to be fair to the company. I support the theoretical 3-year business plan but it’s the rolling 90-day plan that aligns with the reality of your business. You have a responsibility to permanent employees, where hereby promising long-term job security/L&D investment and then not delivering, will undoubtedly lead to in-house cultural issues as well as public relation problems. The last thing that any startup wants to be doing, is making people redundant due to cash flow issues. You might not come back from this.

3. Culture – Hiring Freelancers gives you access to talent that otherwise wouldn’t be available.

Their CV’s are inundated with startup/scaleup companies and projects that describe the use of the latest technologies. Hiring managers constantly talk about the positive impact that these Freelancers have on their team and the lack of management they require. They will give you your time back to focus on core related tasks.

To look at it from another perspective, you’re ideally looking to attract permanent employees and what does a permanent member of staff want from a career change???

“MANAGER, I’d like to work with…” [FILL IN BLANK]

· Cutting edge technology

· A large, experienced Development team

· A company that has TIME for me to develop and train me

· Mentors

The impact of hiring freelancers

– Freelancers will enhance the efficiency of your projects and give you more time to focus on other areas of the business.

– Freelancers will give you greater control of your financial expenditure, leading to a more secure future for the business.

– Freelancers will positively affect company culture. A culture that will then attract more permanent employees.

The Negotiation Norm

The negotiation stage is unarguably one of the most important parts of the application process. As the employer, you want to be careful not to overspend or cause rifts within the existing team by paying too much. From the candidate’s perspective, you want the best deal possible and to be paid well for the value you provide. This can cause challenges for both sides and in my opinion, so many companies out there could be doing this way better.

Just imagine it from a candidate perspective for a second. You apply for your dream role. The company’s great, location is easy and the role sounds perfect. You clearly state your desired salary at the start of the process (for the purpose of this example, let’s say 65-70K) and the company invites you for an interview. You nail it, spend hours on the subsequent technical assignment and that gets the nod of approval. Finally, you get to the last stage and the company decides to make you an offer. You’ve been building up to this moment for weeks, remembering the role ticks all your boxes, and then the offer comes through.

It is 64K. Yes, it’s only 1k less than the minimum but as a candidate you were hoping for more, after all you did say 65-70K!

Why managing expectations is so important

How is the candidate feeling at this moment?

In one word, deflated. Their balloon of excitement has been well and truly popped. Remember, the decision for any candidate to apply for a new job is mainly logical. But as the process nears its end, emotions have a much greater part to play. The candidate in this example has gone from sheer excitement at the start of the process to now feeling like they’ve been short-changed at the final moment.

On top of this, they now face a tough decision; do they begrudgingly accept the offer or face the awkwardness of negotiating and the risk of losing their dream role? There’s a chance they may feel anger towards the company after they felt they were clear from the beginning when it came to salary demands.

Even if the rest of the application process has been amazing, as humans, we’re way more likely to remember how we feel at the end of an experience rather than the start (immediately after a roller-coaster ride, you remember the feeling of elation at the end, not the nervousness beforehand).

This means that by negotiating at the end of the process, the company has turned an enthusiastic candidate into someone feeling disgruntled.

Whether the candidate takes the offer in this example or not isn’t the point, your aim as a company in hiring mode is to have candidates finishing your interview’s feeling that was the best application process ever and if possible, loving the company (even more) come the end.

So how do you achieve this and be able to negotiate?

There is a better way

The two key factors when it comes to managing the negotiation phase are managing each others expectations early on in the process and not hitting anyone with a nasty surprise right at the end!

Some ideas to prevent this include:

Have clear salary brackets for each role and communicate these to the candidate right at the start of the process. If the candidate is asking more than your company structure allows, discuss it now, not later.
Create opportunities to discuss salary expectations at different parts of the application process. Once you’ve completed the first interview, if the candidate’s knowledge & experience isn’t adequate for their salary demands within your company structure, have that conversation. Again, it stops any nasty surprises later down the line and a good candidate will appreciate the honesty now rather than wasting hours of their time only to disappoint at the end. //Another great opportunity is after technical assignment stage.
Employ fairness within your negotiating phase. If a candidate has been clear from the start with their salary expectations, these demands are doable within the current pay structure and their interview process backs-up these demands, don’t try and low ball that person at the end of the process just to save a couple of thousand for the hiring budget. Yes, you’ve made a short term saving, but for what in return? //The candidate might now not even take your offer (think of all the time wasted) or does but now has a bad taste in their mouth. //Are they now spreading the word when it comes to your brand or telling all their friends (who could now be potential hiring targets) how crap it was that they had to come down on salary? That 2k saving could come back to bite!

In Summary

Have a clear salary structure for each vacancy and know what a candidate needs to achieve within that banding to achieve their desired salary – make sure this is communicated to the candidate early on!
Don’t leave salary negotiation to the end of the process – instead have the conversation throughout the process so that everyone knows where they stand and expectations are managed.
Don’t try and low ball candidates at the eleventh hour just to save a few Euros! It could cost you a lot more in the long run!

Some Things To Consider When Choosing A Recruiter

Freelancers: The secret to growing your startup

How are you going to do it?

So why Freelancers?

The impact of hiring freelancers

How to Boss the Negotiation Phase of your Recruitment Pipeline!

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