The Simple Question That Shows What a Recruiter Really Does

As an Animal Health Industry Recruiter and Veterinary Recruiter, I talk with people all the time. I talk with job seekers, I talk with candidates, and I talk with hiring managers. I talk with scores of people every day, hundreds of people every week, and thousands every year.

As you might imagine, every once in a while I encounter a person who doesn’t exactly understand what a recruiter does. And that’s okay. I don’t expect everybody to know what a recruiter does. That would be an unreasonable expectation.

Recently, though, I was talking with someone who didn’t know much about recruiting and they asked a simple question, the answer to which really illustrates the value of a recruiter. That question was this:

“Why would anyone want you to find people for them who are not looking for a job? I don’t understand.”

This is an innocent question asked by someone not familiar with the recruiting profession, and I’m glad they asked it. Let’s explore the answer.

The BIG problem involved

At first glance, this question makes sense to a person from the outside. If you had an open position, why would you hire someone to find candidates for that open position who aren’t even looking for a new job? Why wouldn’t you want to find and hire someone who is actually looking for a job? After all, they would be motivated, right? Theoretically, they would automatically be interested in the position and want to explore it to see what it offered.

I don’t disagree with any of that. In fact, at one level, it does make sense that an organization would want to hire a candidate who is looking for a new job and would be motivated to work for them. However, there is one BIG problem with this line of thinking.

Candidates who are looking for a new job and are motivated to find a new employment opportunity are not always the best candidates to fill a particular position.

As a general rule, organizations want to fill their open positions with the best candidates they possibly can. In other words, they want the most talented and accomplished candidates in the marketplace. They want the candidates who will provide the most value if they were to become an employee. Hiring someone on a full-time basis represents a tremendous investment. There is a lot of time, energy, and money involved and it makes sense that companies want to hire the best. That way, they’ll be more likely to receive a substantial return on their investment of time, energy, and money.

However, sometimes the best candidates for an open position are not actively looking for a new job.

Options available to organizations

This is where an Animal Health Recruiter or a Veterinary Recruiter enters the picture. That’s because organizations often experience difficulty hiring the best candidates when those candidates are not looking for a new Animal Health job or Veterinary job. Many times, they don’t have the time, personnel, or resources necessary. That being said, companies usually have a few options at their disposal, which include the following:

  • They can be satisfied with hiring only those people who are looking for new jobs, whether they’re the best candidates or not. This, of course, decreases the size of the candidate (talent) pool and also dilutes it. Instead of hiring A-level candidates, some organizations are forced to hire B-level and sometimes C-level candidates. This also greatly decreases the return that they’ll receive on their hiring investment.
  • They can attempt to identify, recruit, and hire the best candidates in the marketplace on their own without hiring additional personnel to do so. This option has the potential to be especially frustrating, since not only does it not ensure that the best candidates are hired, but it also typically creates delays in the hiring process. A protracted hiring process rarely produces the desired results.
  • They can hire additional personnel to help identify, recruit, and hire the best candidates in the marketplace. This can be costly, however, since hiring additional employees is a fixed cost and not a variable cost. Ultimately, it also does not ensure that the organization will be able to hire the candidates that it wants to hire, including candidates who are currently working at their competitors.

The best option available

The best option for those organizations that want the chance to hire the best candidates in the marketplace is to use an experienced Animal Health or Veterinary Recruiting Firm. Below are just a few of the reasons why this is the case:

  • An experienced search consultant already knows the identity of the top candidates in the marketplace. Not only that, but they also typically know if those candidates are looking for a job or not. This knowledge allows them to move more quickly, and we all know that speed is important during the hiring process.
  • An experienced search consultant knows how to present an employment opportunity to a top candidate and convince them to consider that opportunity. It helps, of course, if the opportunity is better than the job they already have. But if an organization wants to hire the best, then it must be prepared to offer the things that the best candidates want.
  • An experienced search consultant is just that—a consultant. They have expertise regarding the employment marketplace, the candidates and other companies that are within the marketplace, and the hiring process that not many people possess. Even if an organization hires additional personnel, there’s no guarantee that those people will have the same level of expertise that a search consultant does.

So the answer to this innocent question actually involves two parts. Animal Health Companies and Veterinary Organizations want search consultants or recruiters with experience in the Animal Health Industry or Veterinary Profession to find people for them who are not looking for a job because:

  1. These people almost always include some of the best candidates in the marketplace.
  2. The companies and organizations do not have the time, energy, resources, connections, or expertise to find these people within an acceptable timeframe.

So in essence, the answer to this simple questions shows what a recruiter really does. It shows the value that recruiters provide and why organizations choose to use that value to enhance their workforce.

This is similar to the world of sports, in which the teams with the best players typically win. It’s the same with employers. The companies with the best players (employees) often win in the marketplace.
