Remember the old days when you could just run an ad or place a job posting on a job board? While you’d get a lot of resumes, you would have to then spend several hours reading them to try to find anyone even remotely qualified to join your team. Today, the way companies hire has significantly changed; it is now a candidate’s market. Advancements in technology have allowed for one-click to apply sites, and potential employees now have a large pool of options to choose from. And while you can get plenty of potential candidates this way, it is certainly not the most efficient approach.
As a busy market researcher who’s always pressed for time, the idea of hiring new talent can be overwhelming. Even if you are confident in your skills, your team, and your ability in working with clients, the task of identifying and hiring the right talent for your growing insights team is daunting.
However, you can still hire with efficiency and confidence in today’s market.
In fact, finding and hiring quality talent can be quite easy if you work with the right market research recruitment agency. But in order to make it worth your time and money, you’re going to need a team of professionals who understand your business, your marketplace, and the criteria of your search.
Ask yourself a few preliminary questions:
- Do they specialize in the market research and insights industry or are they generalists?
- How long have they worked in your industry?
- Do they know the same people you know?
- Do they attend the same conferences as you?
- Most importantly, do they have the processes in place to identify and screen the right candidates for you?
The Power of Hiring Through an Agency
Recruitment agencies have the ability to fish in the ponds where the professionals live – market research and insight professionals to be specific. From this large professional pool, recruitment agencies screen and identify the select few candidates that best meet your hiring criteria.
Your recruiter will also be able to accurately assess if candidates are in the price range you are willing to pay for. In addition, they’ll provide candidate CVs, resumes, cover letters, and personality profiles to help you determine if a candidate will be a good cultural fit.
An Interview Process You Can Be Confident In
With the recruiting agencies help, it’s now time for you to start with telephone interviews. Once you’ve had a chance to determine which of the candidates you want to pursue, schedule an on-site visit. It may also be beneficial to have an exercise for them to complete, whether that is to gauge their personality type or their base level skills for the position.
Other members of your team may need to join in this part of the process, giving you a chance to see how they will work with your team and fit your culture.
The key to this stage is to express your interest in the right candidate very clearly and move quickly to present them an offer. If you wait too long, you run the risk of losing their interest or worse – to one of your competitors. In this job market, even in a small industry like market research, the good candidates are getting multiple offers and the slower hiring manager is going to miss out on the good ones.
The good news is there are a lot of great candidates moving around for many different reasons. This is a great time to invest in adding talent to your team, but you must be efficient if you want to land the best catch. But by working with an experienced market research recruiting agency, and following the advice above, you can be confident in your next addition to your insights team.
Knowing how to hire is one thing, but who you should hire can be tough.
That’s why we took our market research expertise and created this short quiz.
Who is going to make the biggest impact on your team? Take the quiz and find out today!
