Any HR Director or Manager will probably have their fair share of experience in recruiting new employees for their firm. From this, they’ll have also experienced a good deal of problems finding the right person for the job. When conducting recruitment in-house, these challenges are largely unavoidable, and every HR worker in the world will experience similar problems. Luckily, there's a solution.
Many of these problems that plague HR teams across the world can be solved by hiring through headhunters for engineering jobs. Headhunting agencies, sometimes known as executive search firms, are experts at providing bespoke recruitment solutions for businesses across all sectors. But how can a specialist engineering search firm such as civil or mechanical engineering headhunters help your company?
To answer, let’s take a look at some of the challenges you’re probably used to facing when recruiting in the Civil Engineering industry.
Candidate Selection Isn’t Large Enough
Likely one of the biggest challenges faced by any HR team when recruiting, sometimes it seems like there's simply not enough people to choose from. Without the right resources, cultivating a broad yet high-quality selection of candidates for your role can be frustratingly difficult, especially when you’re largely limited to applicants from job boards and searching on websites like LinkedIn. By using headhunting agencies, you're opening up your opportunity to a much greater number of people, thus creating more candidates for you.
The reason for this is the extensive resources that headhunting agencies have at their disposal. Such agencies have a large network of business contacts that often spans multiple sectors and industries, even in specialist firms such as civil engineering headhunters. This means that you have access to a much great number of candidates from industries and sectors that your HR department may not necessarily have connections in. This is important as headhunters understand that sometimes the best candidates for your role are hidden away in places that aren’t necessarily obvious to most recruiters.
Headhunters also have the ability to utilise useful resources such as candidate and client databases, many job boards, and recruitment networks which can cultivate the best selection of candidates for you to choose from.
Candidates Aren’t Experienced Enough
One of the most common challenges that HR managers and directors face is finding candidates that are the exact match for the position being offered. Many HR workers will attest that it’s not uncommon to invite seemingly ideal candidates to the interview stage, only to realise that they aren’t a good match, for a variety of different reasons.
Headhunting agencies understand that this is a common issue for every company, and offer a solution through their ability to find and attract the best candidates who possess the right skills and experience that make them a valuable and sought after commodity.
Headhunting agencies achieve this through their extensive connection networks as well as their expertise in finding and appealing to candidates who aren’t even looking for new roles. This is important because often the very best candidates with the most relevant skills and experience are not actively looking for work. Not only this but these people are often fairly content in their current roles, meaning it takes a skilled professional to get their attention and effectively explain that your role is the right one for them. This is something that headhunters are very experienced at, as they understand how much importance lies in the initial approach to these candidates. This is the best way of finding candidates with the level of experience you want for your senior engineering roles.
Taking Up Too Much Time and Effort
We understand that HR Directors and Managers are busy people. HR workers don’t have all the time in the world to focus on recruitment, there are many other responsibilities to deal with as well, which can make the process of recruitment seem incredibly time consuming and sometimes this can be very frustrating. Sometimes it can feel like you’ve been searching for a good candidate forever and you’re getting nowhere, and that’s where headhunters can be of assistance.
One of the key benefits of headhunting agencies is their ability to save you and your business both time and effort when it comes to talent searching and recruitment. The reason for this is because headhunting agencies have the capacity, staff, and resources to fully devote to a headhunt in order to find the right calibre of candidates at a quicker rate than in-house HR departments usually can. The only effort required on your company’s part is often the interviewing and selection stages, and many headhunters are happy to be involved in helping throughout these processes as well.
In regards to timeframe, most headhunters will either provide you with a general or set date for completion of a shortlist, or allow you to negotiate one with them depending on you and your business’s needs. This can end up saving you a significant amount of time, and allows you a more solid timeframe. This proves to be a distinct improvement over the uncertainty of in-house recruitment, where finding the right person for the role can take months and sometimes even years depending on the seniority and specifications of the role.
New Hires Leaving Too Soon After Starting
This has become a growing issue over the past few years. Professionals today, especially in the younger demographic, are much more comfortable with switching jobs if they feel like it’s not entirely suitable. Assuming you're looking to fill a position long-term, you’re going to want to avoid candidates who are likely to simply use your opportunity as a stepping stone. Obviously a lot of the time a candidate’s tendency to do this can be inferred by their previous job history, but there are other factors in play.
Headhunting agencies have plenty of experience dealing with candidates such as this, and can easily filter out those who they think will commit, and who will jump ship. Through experience, they can also provide insight into why this is, what qualities other than job history influence a candidate’s likeliness to stay in your job.
However, we can’t ignore the possibility that a new hire may leave or be let go because they are not right for the role. This is a situation you absolutely want to avoid, but is a challenge encountered by many HR workers. Headhunting agencies aim to deliver candidates who are the perfect fit for your role, and therefore are much less likely to leave or be let go. Agencies such as Executive Headhunters also include replacement guarantees to ensure that the candidates you take on are the right match for the role.
This means that should the hired candidate leave within a certain timeframe, the agency will find a replacement for them so that you don’t have the shell out the cost of recruitment again.
Difficulties Filtering Out the Many Unsuitable Candidates
One of the most annoying things for HR workers when going through the recruitment process is advertising a vacancy, only to receive a flood of applicants who simply aren’t right for the role.
Many job seekers today simply take the approach of ‘there’s no harm in applying’, which unfortunately means that you have to read through hundreds and sometimes thousands of unsuitable job applications for each position. This is very problematic as it not only takes up a large amount of you and your department's time, but these applications also make it harder to identify quality applications, as it’s easier for them to get lost in the shuffle.
Many HR workers in charge of recruitment wish that somebody could cover this process for them, which is where headhunting agencies can be of service. Headhunters are more than experienced in searching through thousands of CV’s and applications, and as such they know exactly what to look for in order to meet your specifications. Furthermore, headhunting agencies more often than not have the time and staff resources which allows them to fully search through large amounts of applicants and candidates. Thoroughness is important if you want to make sure that all the best candidates have been found.
That’s why headhunters make sure to devote the required time to this process in order to leave no stone unturned.
The Best and Most Ideal Talent Quickly Gets Snatched Up by Competitor
As we all know, Civil Engineering is a competitive industry, and quality engineers are in high demand. You’re probably more than aware that of the reality that recruiting the absolute best talent means knowing where to look and who to look for, but perhaps most importantly of all, it requires you to reach this talent before anyone else does. High-calibre, experienced, and skilled candidates will get snatched up by your competitors before you're even aware that they’re there. That’s why it’s so important that you’re able to identify this talent early, often even before they start looking for new opportunities.
With this in mind, utilising industry specialist search firms such as civil engineering headhunters and mechanical engineering headhunters can give you the edge over your competitors when recruiting the best talent in your sector. Headhunters work quickly and efficiently to find hidden gems in your sector before anyone else can.
They utilise their ability to identify and attract talent who are not actively job-seeking to ensure that you can get to this talent before anyone else can. This is one of the many reasons why top headhunting agencies have such a high satisfaction rate, and is one of the main appeals of using a headhunter. Think about it like this; headhunters don’t just do the job for you, they do it whilst providing a high level of talent search that isn’t achievable by most in-house recruiters.
Maintaining Equality and Diversity in Your Hires
As a Human Resources worker in the Civil engineering sector, you probably know more than anyone the diversity issues that lie within the engineering industry. Most notably, engineering firms often struggle attracting female workers due to the industry being largely male-dominated. In HR it’s of course a priority to promote equality and diversity as much as possible, and that means recruiting from a varied and inclusive pool of candidates.
Headhunting agencies are very understanding of this and will always conduct searches to your specifications. This means that if you're prioritising interviewing a diverse range of candidates they can provide this for you, whilst on the other hand if you have a specific focus, for example you're prioritising bringing on female engineers, headhunters can also conduct more narrow searches to achieve this.
They will keep you informed of the progress of the headhunt, so that you're always aware of how well things are going. Obviously, headhunters will always try to create a shortlist of candidates that matches your exact specifications, but if your candidate requirements are too specific or unrealistic, the headhunters will inform you and open a discussion regarding any changes that need to be made to your specifications in order to produce the best shortlist possible.
Find the Right Agency to Suit your Needs
No matter what decision you come to, the important thing is that you choose the right agency for your business and the role you're looking to fill. If you're recruiting for a civil engineering role, make sure to choose civil engineering headhunters with expertise and a track record of high-level recruitment in the sector.
Executive Headhunters operate across all sectors and provide a service that is completely bespoke to the client’s needs, whilst also having significant experience finding the best talent in industries such as engineering and manufacturing.
