Conducting a Confidential Search Through a Recruiting Agency
As a leader or Human Resources representative, you may sometimes find yourself in a situation where you have to conduct a confidential search. Perhaps you have an employee or executive who is underperforming, or your company has opened up a new job position that cannot be announced to the public just yet. In these cases, and other similar instances, you will need to carry out a confidential search to ensure the job opening is not openly advertised. It may be challenging to do so, but some situations will require it.
When it comes to doing confidential searches, enlisting the help of a recruitment agency is highly recommended. By hiring a recruiter, you can prevent getting ads traced back to you or your company. At the same time, recruiters will do all the work to find potential candidates, so you can continue performing your day-to-day responsibilities to keep operations smooth. If it is your first time conducting a confidential search, you may be hesitant to let someone else do the job. However, you will be surprised to know that many companies opt to hire a recruitment agency for this task.
Why Work with an Agency?
The most challenging part about confidential searches is figuring out how not to raise awareness or suspicion within your company or organization. Typically, you will need to find a small inner circle of members who can help you with the search process. However, performing the work internally makes it difficult to ensure 100% confidentiality since you have to go to great lengths to ensure that no information is leaked. At times, it becomes a matter of delaying the news from spreading for as long as possible.
Given the complications involved in the confidential search process, it has become a common practice for companies to find a recruitment agency to do the search. Since the agency can advertise for the position confidentially, you can have access to a larger talent pool, which you may not be able to reach if you did the search yourself. Overall, getting outside makes the search more time-efficient and helps you maintain confidentiality.
Naturally, partnering up with a credible recruitment agency is essential. You will be sharing confidential and important information, so you need to find a company that can be trusted. Likewise, you can explain the specific type of employee you are looking for, as well as how much or how little you want the agency to reveal. With this, recruiters can focus their search on suitable candidates and present you with a viable list. This way, you only need to interview the top candidates, effectively saving you a significant amount of time.
Confidential Search Process
Recruitment agencies will usually put up the job posting without divulging your company name. They use vague descriptions to explain the nature of the work, the scope of the role, and the type of company to candidates. In a sense, agencies will still put in their best effort to describe all the important information surrounding the job, but if there is one thing that they will not mention, it is the company name.
It may sound strange to aspiring applicants not to know the company they are applying for, and in some cases, it may even create doubts about the company’s credibility. However, recruiters only do this to maintain confidentiality about the job search. Additionally, this practice is so commonly done by recruitment agencies, so much so that it has become normal for them to advertise jobs without revealing a company.
Additionally, an experienced recruiter will also utilize sourcing tactics such as LinkedIn and cold calling to reach farther than you are able to reach.
Essentially, you hire a recruitment agencies to keep your company’s privacy and search for talented candidates. It is challenging, to say the least, to maintain confidentiality when working with internal employees, so assigning the task to an outside agency will be highly beneficial.
Do you have a confidential search for which you need help? Contact me today to see how we may be able to help.