As a recruitment business owner, you might think this is a dangerous topic to bring up. However, as a recruitment “puritan”, it’s a subject close to my heart and one that needs to be addressed.

Recruitment has changed immeasurably over the last 12 years. The whole scope of finding candidates, especially in the engineering and technical worlds, has taken a 180° turn. Whereas originally recruiters had to be skilled in assessing applicants who respond to adverts, they must now be far more proactive in finding the candidates (networking) to fill client opportunities. The interview part has since become more limited with telephone screening becoming increasingly common. Quite simply the time spent and skills deployed are now focused on finding, rather than assessing and shortlisting the right candidates.

Why has this happened? Is this a good thing?

Without doubt a lack of technical talent has impacted on this. My theory is that during and immediately post-recession, clients who were recruiting needed quick results to justify the investment in new talent. This led to a poaching culture, and along with the emergence of LinkedIn and portal-led recruitment, recruiters were now focused on finding experience rather than the “right person”. This can lead to unrealistic goals which aren’t met and ultimately slow and poor hiring decisions.

If companies were to focus on hiring the right person with the skills to do the job (and there are some great examples out there), time to hire and quality of recruitment would improve as a result. Poor recruiters would be found out. Recruiters should have the skills and confidence to consult with a client, but the reality is that most just focus on making placements as it’s easier not to challenge a client on their brief than to challenge them. Unfortunately, this costs recruiters and clients time and money in the long run.

At Delve we use unique client qualification and candidate assessment models to give our clients the confidence of getting recruitment right without compromising on speed. We don’t just follow wish lists and hope to find the golden ticket – we work in partnership with our clients to ensure objectives are met on both sides of the table.