What questions to ask a talent partner to determine they’re right for you

What questions to ask a talent partner to determine they’re right for you

To achieve a recruitment model that is right for you and your business, asking the right questions of your talent partner is key.

But first, you must ask yourself the right questions.

Look within

Going out to market and hoping you’ll find a new partner or solution or just something different to what you’re currently doing, won’t work unless you have a clear picture of where you currently stand.

Ask yourself: Why do I need a (new) partner? Why do I need a new solution? What is it that’s not working? What’s changed in our business that means the solution I’ve got now no longer works? What is happening in my market or the talent space that has changed? What is the catalyst for change? What are my competitors doing?

Really delve deep and ask yourself questions that cover your entire end-to-end recruitment process and talent management from attracting talent, candidate selection, diversity recruiting and onboarding to management and organisation, technology and your supply chain.

 

What part of your recruitment process is important to you? What part of your recruitment process is performing best? What would be most impactful if it changed? What would be the most effort if you had to change it? How could you use an external provider to improve your performance?

This exercise will examine your approach to talent, both internal and external, across all models of engagement from temporary and permanent to experienced hires and early careers.

It will also give you a better understanding of your current recruitment process and what your priorities are, and you will have more clarity about what and where improvements can be made to create a recruitment model that is right for your business. A model that is sustainable, evolving and forward-facing, with partners who are as invested in its success as you are.

Moreover, to avoid a bumpy implementation journey, this exercise will help you determine if, as a business, you are even ready to outsource some, or all, of your recruitment process to begin with.

Quick Tips:

1. Start off by looking within and asking yourself Why do I need a (new) partner? Why do I need a new solution? What is it that’s not working?
2. If you don’t know how to define success and if you don’t know what success looks like, then you can’t track and measure it
3. Go beyond the functional questions everyone asks. Stop asking closed questions about “what” they do and start asking “how”.
4. Pay attention to fit: ask questions that help you choose the one with the right culture and the right values.
5. Look to build a partnership that is based on trust and experience, but remember

The definition of success

Equally critical before you start asking questions of your recruitment partner, is your definition of success.

Because if you don’t know how to define success and if you don’t know what success looks like, then you can’t track and measure it. And if you can’t track and measure success, then you don’t ever know whether you’ve achieved it.

For example, having a high number of hires per year but an equally high attrition rate, as well as a poor Glassdoor onboarding score means something isn’t working. But if you simply measure success as the number of hires you have per year, then you might think that your recruitment process is successful, even though you’re having to hire for the same role twice in the same year.

How you define success will vary from organisation to organisation and the right partner will be able to look at your recruitment process and help you identify what you need and how to achieve it.

However, defining success is not just down to the service users. It’s also about taking a strategic view when it comes to defining success and then tying that into your recruitment strategy to meet your strategic goals.

The power of how and why

The next step depends on the outcome of the above preliminary exercise, and the questions you ask a recruitment partner will very much depend on what you want them to do and how much exposure you’ve had to different recruitment models.

If you are looking for a recruitment partner to augment what you do or to augment what other recruitment providers do as part of a PSL, then the questions you ask will be more functional, more about the provider’s experience, the roles they fill and where they have done it before:  

• What do you do?
• What sectors do you work in?
• What core disciplines do you supply?
• What is your attraction strategy?
• What do you use to source candidates?
• What is your selection process?
• What technology do you use?

But if you want something more from your partner, or to outsource some, or all, of your recruitment strategy, you need to delve deeper and go beyond the functional questions everyone asks. 

Stop asking closed questions about “what” they do and start asking “how” they do what they do and “why” they do it that way and the difference it will make to your business.

The answers will all relate back to your recruitment partner’s capability anyway.

Getting to know your talent partner

Buying a recruitment solution should go beyond the functional aspects such a service offers. This is because what you’re investing in is a 3+ year relationship with a provider, which is why you want to ask questions that help you choose the right people, the right company, the right culture and the right values.

Examples of the questions that you want to be asking are:

• What is the experience of working with you going to be like?
• How are you going to work with our hiring managers? Give us some examples of where you’ve had to deal with a hiring manger who’s not providing you with information.
• When you recruit for account managers / customer success managers, where do you look to hire? What qualities are you looking for?
• When there are changes within the account team, how well do you manage those?
• How are you going to work with our procurement team / HR team?
• How do you measure satisfaction / happiness?
• How do you get feedback from the different stakeholders in the recruitment process including hiring managers, candidates, people that you’ve placed, senior stakeholders in the business?
• When you get negative feedback, what do you do?
• Give us examples of where things have gone wrong and how you have reacted. How do you put them right, what have you done?
• How are you going to add value and what information can you provide to demonstrate this?
• How can you help us make better decisions?
• How will you challenge us as an organisation? Give us some examples of where you’ve challenged an organisation about their recruitment process including the way that they do things and the way that they induct people into the business?
• How and why did you implement a certain solution and how long did it take?
• How have you increased attraction with the clients you work with? I’ve been on your website and I’ve noticed you do an RPO with company X, how did you fill their jobs? How did you go to market?

You’re also going to want to ask questions about how flexible and adaptable your potential recruitment partner is. You will want to know how well they can tailor what they're doing to your specific needs rather than just offering you a generic solution.

If you’re deploying technology, again you will want to understand how flexible that is. How can it be adapted for your working processes? How can it be adapted for the terminology that you use as a business?

Ask for examples of where your recruitment partner has worked with an organisation to understand their business strategy and then linked that in with their talent strategy.

What you want is a recruitment partner who is a critical friend as it were, someone who can say to you “I don’t understand why you do this” or “this isn’t doing you any favours, I think you should change it”.

Look internally

Although the word partnership has become a cliché in recruitment, when you get it right, it’s exactly that.

Nevertheless, a partnership is based on trust and experience which is built up over time.

So how do you determine that a recruitment partner is worthy of being trusted? What evidence should you look for?

For a start, you can find out what your recruitment partner does within its own organisation.
Ask them to show you why they chose a course of action in their own business, how they carried it out and what the impact of that was, and how it filtered down to the organisations they work with.

Ask them to show you why they chose a course of action in their own business, how they carried it out and what the impact of that was and how it filtered down to the organisations they work with.

Other good questions to ask include:

• How do you measure how engaged your people are and how has that made an impact on your business?

• What initiatives are you doing internally to get your people and teams engaged?

• Why do people join your business?

• What is your retention rate?

• Why do you think you’ve got good levels of retention?

• What do the career pathways look like in your organisation?

All of this is going to feed into how well someone is going to deliver an MSP or RPO.

Find out how they measure trust and put people first in their own organisation. Ask them why this is important to them.

Go a step further and ask your recruitment partner where they have evolved. Ask them to demonstrate where they’ve done something innovative, what happened and why they chose to do that. Ask what other things they evaluated before doing that.

When meeting with a recruitment partner, ask questions to understand their ethos and culture such as: Why do you work for your recruitment partner? You’ve been there five years, why are you still there? What has your career progression looked like within the organisation?

It’s not just what you ask, but who you ask.

Ask for examples of where your recruitment partner has worked with an organisation to understand their business strategy and then linked that in with their talent strategy.

Then go a step further and talk to and/or meet some of your prospective recruitment partners’ customers. They can tell you whether the transition was a good experience for them, if the users feel like they are being looked after, whether there’s value in the relationship and their recruitment partner has made a difference, whether it’s a mutual relationship.

Find out if your recruitment partner goes above and beyond. Does it exceed expectations? If yes, where and how has it demonstrated this?

 

Will your recruitment partner embed itself in your business and dedicate itself to your business units? Will it live and breathe your strategy and what your business units are trying to achieve?

Is your recruitment partner dedicated, visible and connected in terms of a relationship with its customers?

Sometimes making a difference does not mean a recruitment partner rips everything up and starts over. Sometimes it means helping a customer move forward.

You want to work with a recruitment partner that wants to work with you. Ask them why they want to work for you and listen to what they say. Do they know your market and your competitors? Do they know the talent space you operate in?

If you are talking to a partner who works with other organisations in your market, ask them what their plans are with that business over the next five years and find out what that business’s key drivers are. If they are able to do this, it will illustrate an understanding of your business priorities and an ability to work their talent strategy around that.