Employers

Briefing your recruitment consultant

Your BS Social Care consultant is here to help – the more time you can invest at the outset of a recruitment assignment, the better able he or she will be to find you the perfect candidate.

We’ll ask all the right questions – but in advance of that conversation, consider the following tips:

Use our market intelligence

  1. Seen it all before: For most social care positions, we’ll have long experience of finding people – that means we can offer the best advice.
  2. Salary sanity check: If you haven’t recruited a permanent hire for a while, or if the skills and experience you seek are in short supply, don’t cast your salary and overall package in stone – we can advise on local market rates, including what it might take to secure a specific targeted individual

Play to everyone’s strengths

  1. Speedy sifting: If you need focus on core HR activities, your consultant can provide vital support, rapidly and effectively screening initial applications on your behalf – or helping you to draw up a checklist for sorting CVs efficiently into the classic yes, no and don’t-know files
  2. Find the USPs: We may well understand you and your organisation, but every role is unique; talk to your consultant – perhaps looking back to previous similar vacancies jobs – about what might make this one different (or even what might be less appealing to good people, so that you can identify compensatory factors)
  3. Remove artificial limits: If you’re pushed for time, it’s tempting to put a limit on the number of CVs you want to see or the number of interviews you want to conduct; discuss what your ideal would be – but be open to advice to see fewer or more CVs or people depending on the availability (or lack) of specific priority skills

Keep your best candidates close

  1. Set down markers: Good people may emerge during the early interview rounds; ask your consultant to keep you posted about how those candidates you favour the most are doing in their own job search, so that you don’t lose out by failing to address factors (such as salary, job title or start date) that might convert initial interest to eagerness for an offer
  2. Fast-track your favourites: Careful screening and vetting processes are essential – but avoid rigid adherence to process costing you talent; determine as early as possible when key people might be available for second or third interviews or assessments, so that you can flex for those people you don’t want to fall by the wayside