9 criteria to consider before choosing your sourcing partner

Recruitment challenges are evolving. It is more important than ever for the talent attraction department to measure performance indicators and to optimise their recruitment budgets, as well as address GDPR  issues, understanding changing candidate behaviour, and keep abreast of new technology.

How do you find your way through this wide range of talent solutions? Find out the 9 essential things to look out for when choosing the best recruitment service to suit your needs.

1. Adapting the solution to my business needs and organisation

a. Easy to implement

The ease of implementation of the solution is an important element when taking a decision. A tool that is too complex would hamper employee adoption of this new solution, an implementation that is too time-consuming would delay the recruitment of key talent for the company... In short, the ease of implementation affects the performance of your recruitment operation. The ideal solution must be easily integrated into your existing processes, it must be quickly operational and easy to use for your employees. 

You need to ask yourself the following questions: 

• Once the contract is signed, how will the solution be implemented? 
• Does the partnership include support and training?  
• How easily can it sync with our applicant tracking system (ATS)?

b. The ATS integration

ATS is a tool that helps you manage your talent funnel. The sourcing solution must either provide its own ATS or seamlessly connect with your ATS.

To ensure that the solution you choose will smoothly fit into your recruitment process, ask yourself the following questions:

• What support do you currently get from your ATS? 
• Is your sourcing partner already integrated or can integrate with your ATS?

2. Getting support from experts

a. Candidate insight

Knowing your candidates. Candidate data analysis will enable you to make informed decisions, to optimise your investments. Understanding candidate behaviour is a key element in the success of your campaigns. Your talent partner should support,  should know the subject and your target candidates.

The ideal talent partner should enable you to: invest wisely and reach the right candidates, at the right time, on the right medium, with the right role. Understanding your candidate audience will allow you to make informed decisions and better manage your investments. 

Some questions to ask yourself: 

• Does the solution allow you to track candidate involvement throughout the candidate journey?
• How do you compare the performance and costs of different resources? 
• What KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) do you have access to?

b. Industry expertise

The knowledge of the specific challenges of your industry will enable you to react more efficiently to them.  The recruitment strategy is adapted to your industry and your challenges. Is your’s a competitive industry? Then an employer-branding campaign becomes vital to stand out from your competitors.  

Some questions to ask yourself:

• What is your talent partner’s DNA?
• Have they fully understood your challenges and tailored their recommendations? 
• Have they had experience of working with your competitors in your industry?

c. Account management and support

The quality of the support offered by your sourcing partner goes a long way in ensuring the success of your campaigns. Support should include system training, monitoring the campaigns, regular meetings to discuss campaign performance, to reporting and insight. 

Questions to consider: 

• Do they make recommendations to improve performance?
• Are they well informed about the nuances of your industry? 
• What resources (human and material) will be made available to you?

3. Optimising the performance

a. Performance metrics

With the emergence of Pay per Performance recruitment media in the last half a decade it is possible, in fact, vital, especially under the current climate to measure performance of your sources.

How can you accurately track the results of your candidate recruitment campaigns?  

Some questions to ask yourself:

• Are accurately tracking your campaigns? 
• What metrics are you tracking and what do they mean to the business? 
• Do the reports provided by your suppliers align with yours? 
• Do you have a dashboard to monitor performance in real time with your supplier?

Some of the main indicators we recommend measuring are:

• The number of impressions
• The number of clicks
• The number of CVs submitted
• The number of qualified resumes
• The click rate
• The application rate
• The cost per qualified candidate

For more information on these metrics please check out our recap article. Using this guide, you should be able to prioritise the most relevant KPIs for your business.

b. Optimisation using tech

Using performance tech such a programmatic can replace traditional  "post and pray" methods!  These solutions can not only tell you how your campaigns are performing but introduce optimisation and adjust your campaigns in real time. 

To evaluate the optimisation capacity of the sourcing partner, ask yourself these questions: 

• What KPIs are they able to optimise?  Is it Cost per click or Cost per Application?
• Is the optimisation automatic or does it require your manual intervention?

c. Reach

An ideal sourcing platform should take the guesswork out of the channel distribution but should be based on data.  They should be able to show your best performing channels and highlight underperforming ones. 

Some questions to consider here: 

• On which channels can you advertise your roles through them? 
• Do you have access to all the performance indicators per channel? 
• Are the channels included in their offering tried and tested?

The concept of agnostic delivery is closely linked to cross-channel distribution.  Depending on the role or the skill set required, the most effective acquisition source will not always be the same. Having a diverse channel options enables you to adapt to changes in candidate behaviour and type of hiring. The ideal platform should enable you to: adjust investments to trigger the right channel at the right time and for the right person.

d. Employer branding service

A strong employer brand strategy enables you to stand out from competitors and can have a significant impact on the cost of your recruitment efforts. Companies with a strong employer brand reduce their recruitment costs by up to 43% (Source: La Super Agence). As such, it is important to work thoroughly on it by creating an action plan, but also to boost it by innovating on the communication channels used.

Areas to consider can be:

• Does the solution envisaged provide an employer-branding service? 
• What distribution media are being proposed? 
• What performance indicators do they monitor?

Interested in the topic? We are holding our webinar to help you choose the ideal sourcing partner: