Why Recruiting Yourself will Cost You In The End

One thing I love about New Zealand, is our attitude towards ‘giving things a go’, putting our mind to it, and cobbling together a solution.  When it comes to hiring talent however, this is usually a disaster.

Recently we placed a Financial Controller into a very cool role.  The CEO had ‘conducted his own process’ – and ended up with two people who he thought were ok, one of those took another role, and he was left with one person to “choose” from.  

And he wasn’t sure if this person was right.

So, after discussing what he was looking for, we spoke with people we knew were right for the role, the organisation and for the stage in their career.  We had 5 people shortlisted within 4 days. Interviews and offer the next week, and a very happy CEO right now.

“On reflection”, said the CEO, “we have wasted so much time on this process doing it ourselves, but more importantly, I was about to hire someone who would have been terrible in the role, just because I wanted to save the business a few thousand dollars in recruitment costs”.

For most companies – staffing costs are their largest expense.  

Business success or failure relies on the people you have working in your business.  

So your attempt to save money by recruiting yourself will mostly cost you dearly in the end.  Here’s why:

1. YOU WON’T ACCESS THE BEST TALENT.  Simply – top talent don’t bother with job boards anymore. They want to be represented to an organisation and don’t want to waste their time with the wrong opportunity, culture or leader.  Job boards aren’t attractive to people who want to manage their privacy. Accessing talent is so important and you simply can’t do this by placing a Seek Ad.
2. YOU’LL SPEND A LOT OF TIME AWAY FROM YOUR ‘DAY JOB’. Running a decent recruitment process is time and energy intensive.  Can you really afford time away from your current role to run a proper process, or will you cut corners to save time?  Perhaps, you’ll just spend more of your time at work…
3. YOU’RE AT RISK OF HIRING A DUD. Quite simply – there are nutters out there.  Some nutters are brilliant at interviewing and even better at making a mess of your business.  You don’t have the benefit of having interviewed 50 people per week every week of the year*, so the risk of hiring your next trouble maker is increased.  
4. YOU’RE ILL-EQUIPPED TO RECRUIT. You are not an expert at recruitment.  Do you know how to handle counter offers, salary negotiations, multiple job offer situations, or simply how to ask appropriate  interview questions? Recruitment seems very simple, but to do it well is incredibly intensive and requires skill and experience – which in reality you probably don’t have.
5. YOUR INTERNAL RECRUITMENT TEAM ARE DISTRACTED.  Whether you have a recruitment team, or HR generalists – the reality is, they have a lot on their plate right now.  Recruiting for Accounting & Finance staff is a specialist area and one that they are generally ill-equipped or resourced to do.  Consult is the Accounting & Finance specialist plug in that many large organisations use to hire in this specialist area. Put simply – you wouldn’t go to your GP for a heart condition, so why would you expect your HR resource to be able to source your Accounting and Finance staff?
6. YOU WILL TYPICALLY TAKE A LOT LONGER TO RECRUIT. The trouble with doing it yourself is that you have to do it all yourself.  It takes time and time kills many recruitment deals. Recruiting in a talent short market is incredibly difficult because there usually aren’t people to ‘choose from’, more, there are usually people who are ‘left over’ because they haven’t taken another role.  

I’m not sure about you, but I am never excited about leftovers.

* At Consult, we interview 50 people every week. 2,500 per year (with a couple of weeks off for Xmas!).

The Consult team speak to more accounting and finance professionals than anyone else in Auckland every week, so we meet with all the best talent, all the time. Call us anytime to discuss – we would love to help you find your next super star!