1. Lack of Resources
No HR department – A business does not have an internal HR team available to them for managing the process effectively.
Hiring in a new jurisdiction – your business is expanding and your bringing on your first team member in a new market or country. You need local talent hunters to manage the search and selection process to ensure you are not missing anything, from compensation variances to perk expectations. (Read our separate article on this topic)
Staffing issues in auxiliary markets – often businesses with large head offices in major markets will have teams in other cities as well. They might have full time HR resource available in the main office, but finding someone internally to manage the hiring process somewhere else can be a challenge.
Replacing the top employee (you) – you are beginning your succession planning process, perhaps you’re looking to at least partially retire and rather than selling the business you want to hire a president while you stay on as chairman. (We have another piece all about succession planning here)
2. Requisite of Confidentiality
An employee is underperforming – in a sensitive situation such as this, the search and selection process needs to be done off-site in a confidential and professional manner to facilitate the exchange with the minimal amount of disruption to business operations.
Company structure changes – perhaps your business is adding a new division that’s not yet public information, buying a new company or you are adding a product line and don’t want to announce it within the organization yet. You need to begin the hiring process and turn to a local recruiter or headhunter to start tracking potential hires.
Top-grading – sometimes as market conditions worsen businesses need to scale back on their staffing. Alberta is an excellent example of this situation, where at one point in time talent is in short supply while business is booming, so businesses lower their overall requirements for new hires. In a converse, deflated market, talent is much more widely available and companies will be motivated to review their workforce and make changes as necessary.
Competitive Landscape – in some industries companies are reluctant to recruit directly from competitors, especially in small local markets where they know each other and may cooperate on projects or associations etc. Sometimes these clients require a recruiter to act as an intermediary giving them arms length distance or plausible deniability.
3. Experience and Expertise
Confidence of choice – we deal with situations at times where organizations feel they have a good choice already, but want to make sure. They work with us to go through a review of potential candidates so they can be confident that have the best option available to them. For this process we can work with businesses in a different way, in a flat-fee structure rather than contingency where we know most likely the candidate will have already been chosen.
Previous non-success – perhaps your business tried to fill a similar role previously and weren’t able to find the right candidate. The need arises again so you instead turn to a recruiter from the beginning.
Let us know if you can think of one we missed! If you find yourself in a situation listed above, get in touch.
