The importance of company culture for recruitment consultants

Finding the ideal candidate for a job means more than experience and qualifications. Danielle Whittaker of Kingdom Recruitment explains that company culture is one of the most important things to consider when recruiting new employees; and this means knowing a business, its values and their day-to-day life inside and out for consultants.

Company culture encompasses everything that makes a company unique. This includes the values, behaviours and how things are done daily and overall to create a company environment. This also consists of any benefits offered to employees like working from home or company events.

For example, CB Insights' culture entails employees being up to date with evolving technology and managers talking regularly with employees about their career paths. They want to hire people hungry for knowledge, so they encourage their employees to take on new challenges by offering stipends and more learning opportunities.

One thing they do to enhance the company culture is Hack Day, where employees work on anything they want for 24 hours.

A solid and visible company culture makes hiring new employees and retaining those currently employed much easier for a business. If employees can succeed and grow within a business and build lasting relationships, they’re more likely to stay.

Companies can lose out on vast amounts of money when recruitment is done wrong. Agency Central found that hiring a typical mid-management role at £42k per year costs £132,000, encompassing recruitment fees, training costs and loss of productivity. For some companies, a bad hire can make or break a business.

A potential candidate could have the best experience and skills possible, but a negative attitude or refusal to embrace company values will cost recruiters and the business more in the long term. 

The impact of a poor cultural fit includes employees being less effective in their roles, disharmony among other staff, feeling isolated, suffering performance, being less influential and sometimes, leading other colleagues to resign. In fact, in a whitepaper by Robert Walters, they found that 73% of professionals have left a job because of poor cultural fit.

Providing a solid and enjoyable company culture can also improve recruitment activities through reviews on job listing websites like Glassdoor and Indeed, to which many job seekers pay close attention.

Outsourcing recruitment

Many companies mistakenly believe that outsourcing recruitment leads to sacrificing company culture. While a recruitment consultant may be outside of a company's day-to-day activities, they’ll take the time to assess company culture, skill sets and other desirable qualities when sourcing candidates. As a result, it becomes easier to find better quality candidates and a stronger suit for the business.

By outsourcing, businesses get more flexibility, guidance and time to work on other things to help meet their wider goals. The outsourced agency will also work on effective workforce planning, training and development, and building long-term talent pools.

Plus, they have experience finding the right type of people at volume. Not many in-house teams have this capability.

The job of a recruitment consultant

Working as a recruitment consultant revolves around the ability to build and manage strong relationships. They need to understand people and what motivates them to be an effective worker. A big part of the job is being compelling and persuasive, which entails knowing the business inside out, including culture.

A recruitment consultant has to work closely with current colleagues to gain insight into the day-to-day workings of a business and with senior managers and directors to understand both the history and the vision for the company.

There are many techniques and methods a recruitment consultant may recommend for the hiring process.

Some consultants recommend conducting psychometric testing to assess cultural fit. These personality and aptitude/ability tests are used to measure the potential behaviours of an individual and whether they’ll work well within a team. By conducting these at the interview stage, a recruiter can whittle down any potential bad hires.

Many recruitment consultants would agree that dedicating a specific stage of the interview process to identifying whether someone is a cultural fit is necessary to find the right person who will do the job well.

From assessing skill sets and desired qualities to developing a business’ talent pool, consultants are essential for a business’ workforce planning. With many things to consider when hiring for a position, experience and skills are high on the list. However, it’s also important to consider company culture and how they’ll fit into the company environment to benefit both the candidate and the business.