Fewer and fewer employers are using multi-agency Preferred Supplier Lists and registering their vacancies with more than one recruiter for one reason – it is far less effective than working with the right recruiter on an exclusive basis.

81% of our work over the past year has been exclusive. We know that it is the most effective method for employers to adopt for many reasons that have existed historically, but with one significant contributing factor – it’s a process that reaches more candidates and engages each one more effectively.

Recruiters have been talking to clients about this and pleading for exclusivity for years, justifying their position for a number of reasons:

• Establishing a stronger partnership approach
• Saving the hiring managers’ time
• Building long term relationships
• Confidentiality
• Cost (although we do not believe that exclusivity and discounted rates necessarily go hand-in-hand)

If there is one objection that we hear most regularly it is

“We want to speak to other recruiters to ‘spread the net’ and see who they have ‘on their books.’”

1. "Spreading the net” is an aspect of recruitment that every recruiter will engage. It is not the most important aspect of a tailored search for a rare skillset or a high-quality individual.
2. Strong candidates who are “on the books” of a recruiter will have already been placed. We value our database but it is not as important as our relationships and our capability to find the right candidates for our clients.

So what is the most important factor in every recruitment process?

Finding the best candidate from the deepest possible pool of quality is an objective for every recruitment campaign. Working exclusively with the right recruiter is a far better method of achieving this than the “spray and pray”, “first past the post” system of contingent recruiting.

It all starts at the planning stage – a good recruiter will not just have the ideal candidate’s CV in their folder, they will know how many candidates they need to reach and consider for that specific requirement – only then can they be confident that they have the right shortlist.

Every job with every employer comes with its own unique stamp that will increase the target pool (if the brief is open and the attractions are high) or decrease it (if there is a niche skill requirement or the attractions are lower quartile). Looking across our activity over the past year, the size of our candidate pool in our Accountancy & Finance specialisms over the past year has been:

Every client should ask their single recruiter how many candidates they have covered in their process – it creates a context and a strong mandate for your chosen candidate. This is an exclusive feature of exclusive recruitment!

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