So, you are looking for a new recruit. How do you choose the right agency to help you find them?

With the rise of social media, inparticuarly LinkedIn, anyone can gain a list of the candidates in the market within minutes. But this isn’t going to help you find the best candidate for your role and your organisation.

You need to find an agency that knows your market and already has engaging relationships with the best candidates in the market, not just a list of names. The right recruiters spend their lives speaking to the best people in the industry and consequently are not only working on behalf of employers to find employees; they also work on behalf of an employee to find the right employers to help their career progression, and this makes all the difference. The engagement level in this kind of relationship is high and the most eligible candidates will only trust the recruiters who have taken the time to really get to know them with their next roles; this can make it easier to sell your new role to the right candidate – even one who might not actively be looking to move.

A lot of businesses will find that they have tried the recruitment model in house through LinkedIn and other channels, with some success, but many are finding that the returns are diminishing; many find they are working harder, advertising harder but the desired people are not responding . You could argue that, to an extent, the recruitment model is based on monologuing loudly at a group of people, but as we are all finding when it comes to digital and social engagement, personalisation is key. It is important to find the right recruiters who know how to have a long term individual dialogue with the right people.

We know that there will only be a small pool of great candidates in the industry that will be the right potential new employees for your organisation; find an agency that knows the names and job patterns of each of these candidates, who will have touched base with all of the pool at least once in their career and will be in a great position to contact them about your role.

So next time you go to choose a recruitment agency to aid you in your process, ask the question of engagement. If they can’t evidence their ability to engage in a dialogue with the candidates you want then they probably aren’t the right agency to find your next employee.