This month I am celebrating my ten year anniversary with Celebrity Staff! In my ten years, quite a lot has changed. The employment landscape in Omaha has changed, the process of how applicants apply for jobs has changed, the way our clients conduct interviews has changed, and the process we go through to recruit candidates has definitely been changed by technology and the advent of social networking. In honor of my anniversary, I thought I’d sit down with a client that I have worked with my entire career with Celebrity to find out if the reasons why employers choose to work with a recruiting firm have remained the same or if they have also changed.

Karen Nalley is the Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Art Jetter Company, an insurance brokerage firm in Omaha, Nebraska. Karen has more than 20 years of experience in the insurance brokerage industry specializing in health, dental, disability, life, and long-term care insurance solutions. Art Jetter Company has been in business for more than 30 years and currently has an office staff of about 30 employees. Karen and I have worked together for the past ten years, and I sat down with her to ask her questions about her experience and motivation to continue to turn to Celebrity Staff for her temporary, Match Hire®, and direct-hire staffing needs. 

Q:  When you find out you have an opening, you typically call me the same day. You haven’t run an ad for an employee in ten years, and you hire a new employee about once a year. Why don’t you run an ad for the position and see if you can find a candidate on your own before you engage a recruiting firm? 

A:  Unless you interview on a daily basis, you don’t develop the expertise to do it well enough. The misperception is that anyone can run an ad and interview the interested candidates. People think that because you are good at “reading” people you are a natural at interviewing, but interviewing is an acquired skill with a very large margin of error. 

The other misperception is that all it costs you to do the hiring on your own is the cost of the ad. But as a manager/entrepreneur/executive, your value to your firm is X amount of dollars per hour, and if your job is not specific to knowing how to navigate the recruiting and interviewing process, and how to avoid common hiring pitfalls, it will take you twice as long or longer to do what a professional recruiter is trained to do. Then you add up the rest of the costs for the other people in your firm involved in the process, and all of these steps are going to take your staff twice as long as someone who knows exactly how the process should work, how to interview, reference, what to look for, what to screen out, what to screen in, etc. 

It really does become an expensive in-house endeavor if you are a small business. For me, if I can make one extra sale, it covers the cost of the placement, so why wouldn’t I just make the sale and leave the recruiting to the recruiter? Then I don’t have to worry about creating an ad, screening a hundred applicants, taking phone calls about the position, interviewing, referencing, it’s all done. On my own the process could take weeks or months. The last time I had a full time position open, I called Anne and told her about it, and within 24 hours she had a qualified and interested candidate with industry experience interview with me the next day, and we hired that person.

Q:  A common barrier to companies considering using a recruiting firm is that the fees are too high. You’ve been using our recruiting firm for everything from temporary placements, to Match Hire®, to Direct Hire placements, and you and I calculated that I’ve placed 30 percent of your existing staff during the past 10 years. How do you continue to justify the fees?

A.  I think that people who say the fees are too high are looking at it all wrong. I probably use Celebrity at least once a year for a full-time placement, so I pay a fee about once a year. But, the way you grow as a small business and as an entrepreneur is by hiring really good, talented people specific to your industry. The way my relationship works with Anne is that she is keeping her eye out for those people all year round. Sometimes, she has called with someone that had a perfect background for my business, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to hire them because of what it would mean to the future success of my business, so I created a position, hired her recruit, and paid the fee! 

You can’t just look at the fee as the cost of that one employee. Anne is actually the cheapest employee I have! She works for me all year round and I only have to pay her once a year. In order to get that kind of value out of the relationship you have to work with someone who has put in the time to get to know your business, and knows when to call you with the type of talent that can really help your business grow. The smaller your firm is the more hats you and your people probably wear, the more valuable your time and resources are, the more you really do need a dedicated, contingent recruiter. 

Q:  What advice do you have for a hiring official who has never used a recruiting firm in order to get the best result?

A:  Find a recruiting firm and individual recruiter that you trust, and then commit to them for all of your hiring needs. Quit shopping other firms to find the best rate; quit taking calls from other recruiters.  Find a recruiter who has a genuine interest in you and your business, one that understands what drives your business, what the culture is like, what kind of personalities work and don’t work, what skill sets are critical, what the training is like, etc., and then spend the time working with your recruiter to get them the answers they need to partner with you. That takes time and trust.

Ideally, your recruiter will be an extension of you; they are representing you and your firm in the marketplace searching for talent. They need to know everything you know. I know the temptation is to call a recruiter with a job description and think that they can get the right match from that, but there’s a lot more to it than just the job description. The recruiter is going to be reaching out to a trusted network of referrals on your behalf so you have to be willing to spend the time up front with your recruiter – the communication has to be a two way street.

So first, you have to have a recruiter who wants that type of relationship and isn’t just interested in placing a candidate just to make a commission and then disappears on you. Second, you have to be willing to put in some time to help them get up to speed. Find a recruiter who has been around for a while. You are basically paying for, or investing in, that recruiter’s network and expertise. That’s what the fee is for. So at Celebrity, I work with Anne Romero because she has ten years with Celebrity, has spent her career building her network, and knows the people to tap when I call with a need, and can turn around within 24 hours and deliver because she’s taken the time to understand me, my business, and the jobs I have here. That’s a recruiter’s best asset – the combination of knowing who to call, and then knowing how to ask the right questions to get the right fit – and that’s what you want to look for in your recruiter. 

Q: It is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between recruiting firms. In your opinion, what sets one firm apart from another?

A: The biggest difference is how flexible that recruiting firm will be with you. You want to find a company that will tailor its recruiting process to your needs, and fit into your hiring process, not the other way around. I like working with Celebrity because they found out how I hire, what assessments I administer, what questions I want the answers to, and then they do all the work to screen the candidates using my internal process. They collected the materials from me, have them on file, and then they administer it to their prospective candidates for my jobs, and ask the candidates my questions. I don’t even see the candidates who didn’t meet the criteria I need. Celebrity administers the process, and just doesn’t send me the candidates who don’t pass. It saves me time on all fronts, and I know that the candidates I am getting already meet my internal hiring criteria.

Q: As someone who has used both the Match Hire® and Direct-Hire options, how do you choose between hiring a candidate using the Match Hire® or Direct Hire process?

A:  I think you have to make that decision on a case-by-case basis with the help of your recruiter.  And it again goes back to working with a recruiter who really does have your best interests in mind so that they can help you decide which option is going to be the best option. It really does depend on the candidate’s situation, the job, the need, the level of position, and other factors. You have to work with a recruiter who can help lay out the pros and cons of both options, and then choose the best option for that particular job and candidate. There really isn’t a cut and dry answer.  

Q:  You’ve also used our temporary services when you’ve had a short-term hiring need. Some companies that are highly specialized feel that they can’t use temporary employees because of the time it takes to train. Your company is an insurance brokerage firm, and the work is highly specialized.  How do you effectively use temporary employees when your business is so specialized?

A:  When you have the right recruiter who has taken the time to understand the nature of your business and the work, and you’ve taken the time to help them understand what skills and experience are critical, it doesn’t matter how specialized the business is, they will be able to identify if they have the right candidate with that skill set or background within a very short amount of time. 

Q:  One of the biggest factors in the success of a partnership with a recruiting firm is open, honest, and timely feedback and communication between the recruiter and the hiring official.  It’s not always easy to deliver news that is less than positive. What is your advice to others on communicating effectively with your recruiter?

 A:  The communication is a two way street and you have to find a way to deliver detailed information about what’s working and what’s not working. If a candidate isn’t a fit, it isn’t very helpful to say, “They just weren’t what I was looking for”. You have to be able to articulate the reasons why, so that the recruiter can understand how to go back and adjust their recruiting strategy or screening strategy accordingly.  A “gut feeling” isn’t enough; you have to find a way to put into words why you have a gut feeling that it’s not the right fit. Otherwise, the recruiter won’t know what to change to get you the right candidate.

Anne Romero, Celebrity Staff Account Manager

About Anne Romero, CIR, SPHR
In her 10th year at Celebrity Staff, Anne Romero is a seasoned account manager and recruiter. In that time, she has successfully placed 3000 candidates in temporary and full-time administrative, management, and corporate support positions with both small and large firms in the Omaha metro.

Anne earned a top performer award in 2003 and the prestigious President’s Club Award in 2008. She also secured her Certified Internet Recruiter (CIR) designation in 2008 and stays on top of the latest advances in internet and social media recruiting. In addition, Anne earned the SPHR distinction in January 2010 and looks forward to putting her human resources knowledge to work for her clients!

Originally from Chicago, Illinois, Anne came to Omaha to attend Creighton University, where she earned her BA in English Literature. Anne serves as the Vice President of Membership for All About Omaha and is President of the William A. Paxton Business Tips Society. When she’s not keeping her eye on the talent market, Anne spends time with her husband, Gabe, and their two year old son, and reads as much as she can!