The Recruitment Cycle
June 23, 2009 by Damian
The Global Financial Crisis (or whatever it is now called) has impacted the legal recruitment market in many ways, the main and obvious one being fewer jobs and more candidates.
However, one of the most interesting effects from a recruiter’s point of view, is the length of time it now takes to get someone into a new role. Whereas in the boom market, employers were very quick off the mark to get candidates in for interviews and make them offers before their competitors did, they now take a much more considered approach. The CV evaluation process takes longer, the interview process takes longer and is more involved, the post-interview evaluation takes longer and even getting an offer letter out now can take some time.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with this. In the current environment, employers have every right to make sure that the person that they are hiring is the right person for the role. For them, I am sure that it is a refreshing change to not have to drop everything else just to get someone in for an interview in case they go elsewhere.
However, as it is contrary to the way that the process has been handled over the last few years, candidates can get frustrated at the length of time that it takes to get a final decision.
As such, I think that is part of my (and other recruiters’ jobs) to take some control of this process. We can do this in two ways – (1) we give the candidates a very realistic timeframe at the start of the process – forewarned is forearmed and (2) we keep in constant contact with our clients to ensure that momentum is kept up. We ask them to provide us with information on when decisions are going to be made and we communicate this to our candidates.
Hopefully this way, candidates do not lose interest and clients still end up with the best person for the job.
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I’d add that clients should not assume that they can move at their leisure just because the market is slow moving at present. I’d argue that they should always be prepared to expedite a process to get great talent on board. It sends a great message about their brand, culture and leadership when they are prepared to engage with people quickly.