harvard brown guide to recruitment

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Recruitment Guide Understanding the Recruitment Industry




What We Do

Harvard Brown work in Partnership with a diverse range of carefully selected clients, ranging from boutique executive search firms to multinational and often multi award-winning recruitment companies.

With literally thousands of recruitment companies in the UK alone, it can often be difficult to know where to start when searching for the right company for you. We add value to your job search through the relationships we have developed with a number of the UK’s leading recruitment organizations that offer the career prospects you deserve.

We only work with companies that offer the most competitive commission structures and incentives, allowing you to earn what you deserve as a result of the results you deliver. Our clients also offer positive and supportive working environments and are organically businesses that provide the standard of training required to allow you to reach your full potential and advance your career as quickly as your abilities allow.

Our clients have a track record of training and developing graduates who joined them with no prior experience into some of the UK’s top performing recruiters. Many of our clients have won awards such as “Sunday Times Fast Track 100, “Hot 100 Recruiter List (Sponsored by Royal Bank of Scotland),” “Sunday Times Top 100 Best Companies to Work For” amongst others.

Working with Harvard Brown

As a candidate you will receive a proactive, friendly and dedicated service where you will be treated respectfully by a Consultant with a wealth of experience in the recruitment to recruitment market.

After a thorough interview with one of our Consultants, we look to secure and do our best to prepare you for interviews with companies that we believe you are ideally suited to. We invest a great deal of time working with you to ensure you are fully prepared for every interview and insist our clients provide honest and accurate post interview feedback. Our approach is governed by an appreciation of how important it is for you to find a long term career, not merely a job.

If you are looking to embark in a career in the recruitment industry, we look forward to helping you.

The Recruitment Guide

The information herein is designed to help develop your understanding of the recruitment industry and serve as a reference to help with any interviews you may have.

Although on the surface recruitment can appear very similar from one company to another and one industry to another, there are actually a number of different ways of working which are worth taking the time to understand when searching for your ideal role in the recruitment industry.

An Introduction to Recruitment




The recruitment industry is now worth over £26billion per year in the UK alone and is one of the most exciting careers available to graduates right now. The industry is renowned for high earning potential and fast track career progression and as a result attracts many highly success driven graduates. Our clients place a great deal of importance on promotion from within and look to reward employees with promotion early in accordance to success as opposed to seniority. Your success within the recruitment industry is clearly defined and not subjective, therefore it is possible to progress through the ranks of seniority as quickly as you deserve to. Many of our clients boast tremendous success stories of employees reaching Directorship within three years from joining with no prior recruitment experience.

The role itself is incredibly challenging and you will be expected to develop profitable working relationships with candidates and clients often at a high level of seniority and constantly meet (and preferably exceed) sales targets. In order to excel within this environment, you must be a competitive, money motivated and success driven individual with an engaging personality, possessing professionalism and credibility in abundance.

A typical day for a Recruitment Consultant can often involve a diverse range of tasks, from candidate generation through headhunting and proactive networking to securing interviews for your candidates and working with them to ensure they are fully prepared. You will often be calling hiring managers of various organizations and “pitching” for new business and working to develop an understanding of what they are looking for in the candidates they intend to hire. You will be required to successfully manage expectations of both clients and candidates throughout the interview process, close deals and earn your commission.

Much of the role will be phone based and involve cold calling and the hours can be long. The rewards are most certainly there for those sufficiently motivated and willing to rise to the challenge.

Researcher or Trainee Consultant?

When applying for graduate positions in the recruitment industry you may have noticed some roles have the title or Researcher and some have Trainee Recruitment Consultant. The role of a Researcher is typically more concerned with the generation of candidates. This may involve headhunting, database management, advertising and networking and passing the potentially suitable candidates on to a Consultant who will then work to place them. At this stage you are unlikely to be dealing with clients. As you become more experienced and progress to a Consultant, you will usually be more directly involved in the origination of new business from potential clients, ascertaining their hiring needs and managing all aspects of the recruitment process including negotiating offers and closing deals.

A Trainee Recruitment Consultant role however usually provides the opportunity to canvass for new business from a very early stage, sometimes as soon as your first day. With the help of your mentor and or trainers you will learn how to pitch for new business and work to manage your specialist area of recruitment in what is often called a 360 recruitment role, which essentially means doing everything from developing new business to closing deals.

The Recruitment Processes




There are two main types of recruitment and a brief synopsis of each is provided below.

Contingency Recruitment

This is whereby a recruitment agency is working to fill a vacancy on behalf of their client. If the agency successfully fills the vacancy with a suitable candidate, the agency will invoice the client a percentage of the basic salary of the candidate, usually when they start work.

If the agency fails to fill the role, they receive nothing in terms of payment and often in this case (but not

always) there will be more than one agency working on the role/s for the client.

Retained recruitment

This is whereby a recruitment company is being retained for their services to fill a particular role (usually quite

senior positions – typically 100k salaries +). The recruitment company would usually charge 1/3 of the fee once

they have successfully pitched for the retainer and obtained the client’s agreement to work on the role. The

second 1/3 is charged once a shortlist of acceptable potential candidates have been presented to the client

and a final 1/3 once the candidate either accepts the job or starts work with the client. This process is often

called “executive search” or “search and selection.” Researchers working for executive search companies are

responsible for “name gathering,” “market mapping” and “headhunting” suitable candidates to pass on to the

Consultants in their team and work to develop a thorough understanding of their specialist market prior to

moving on to a Consultant role. They work closely with their colleagues to produce “long lists” of potential

candidates which are then cut down to “short lists” and therefore introduced to the client.

Evolution of the recruitment processes

Traditionally, headhunters worked for executive search firms and contingency recruitment often meant that

advertising was the main source of candidate attraction. Although this can still be true, in some cases, this no

longer applies as the recruitment processes are not always so obviously contrasting.

Many of our clients adopt the methodology of an executive search firm within a contingent market place. They

work to “map” the markets and proactively headhunt and place senior candidates that are considered to be

“passive” candidates, as they are not necessarily in the market looking for work. In this sense they are

operating like a “search firm” despite not necessarily having to or choosing to conduct any retained

assignments. Many of our clients also combine both retained and contingency assignments to offer the best

recruitment solutions for their clients at any given time. Offering both a contingency and retained solution can

demonstrate flexibility to their clients’ needs and many companies have adopted a similar methodology, often

given the term “hybrid recruitment” as they are combining and blending recruitment methodologies for a

bespoke service. Whether a retained or contingency recruitment solution is the best way will be dependent

upon a number of variables at any given time, such as the nature of the role and how likely it is to be filled and

in what time frame. Other factors to consider could be the knowledge and expertise the agency has within the

particular field concerned and the strength of the working relationship between the client and agency.




In the aforementioned examples, we are referring to recruitment on a permanent basis. In this case you will usually charge your client a percentage of the basic salary of the candidate you have placed. If for example you place a candidate on £50,000 basic salary and you have agreed a 20% fee with your client, you will charge £10,000 once the candidate starts work.

Contract Recruitment

Much of the recruitment conducted by our clients is on a contract basis. Placing candidates on a contract basis (contractors) involves negotiating a daily or hourly charge rate with the client and negotiating a pay rate with the contractor. The difference between the charge rate and the pay rate is known as the “margin” which is often expressed as a percentage and is how the recruitment agency makes money.

Permanent vs. Contract

Although this does not apply in all cases, recruiting on a permanent basis can often be seen as a more consultative process. This is because you are placing candidates in positions they are likely to remain in for the long term so you can imagine it is more important for them to find the ideal position and are less likely to compromise. If however a Contractor takes a role for a six month period, they are arguably more able to compromise if one aspect of the company or role is not ideal knowing they plan to move on soon anyway. Contract Recruitment is often viewed as more fast-paced and you may have to manage several projects at once and be expected to think and react quickly to any given situation. Another point to consider is in terms of how you get paid for a contract or permanent placement respectively. When securing a permanent placement, there is typically a large amount of commission for you to receive soon after the candidate starts work. With contract deals however you will typically get smaller but more consistent commission payments. There is arguably no better or worse for all people in all situations, although giving some thought to some of the above can enable you to understand what might be the best recruitment process for you. See below for a sample commission structure on a permanent basis.

Dual Desk

This is a mix of both permanent and contract recruitment and can have its advantages. The majority of recruitment companies however have Consultants that focus on either contract or permanent recruitment.

Commission

Commission structures can often vary considerably in the recruitment industry and the amount of commission you receive from closing deals may typically range from 10-30% of the fees invoiced or "billings." Many recruitment companies offer tiered commission structures to increase to a higher percentage in accordance to the more you bill. Commission is paid monthly, quarterly or annually depending on the company.

A typical example below of a commission structure on a sliding scale.

Based on billings generated per month. In this case billing less than 5k per month equates to no commission. The 5k is often called a "threshold" or "desk charge."




5k-10k = 10% commission



20k+ = 25% commission

Many of our candidates benefit from using this manual as a reference to reread prior to any interviews they may have in the recruitment industry. If you would like any more information do not hesitate to get in touch your Consultant. Any suggestions on how to improve this manual are always welcome and can be emailed to [email protected]. I hope you find it useful when preparing for interviews and look forward to hearing about your success.

Kind Regards,

Will Duffield

Managing Director

Harvard Brown Ltd

mailto:[email protected]

harvard brown guide to recruitment

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