It’s not always clear what Recruiters do behind the scenes when you sign up to work with their agency. So, we are giving clarity on what goes on at CorTalent during each step of the recruiting process and the value our approach provides.
Discovery and Strategy
Over the first week of the search process, a lot of things are in motion at CorTalent. Once a contract is signed, a kick-off call is scheduled. Prior to the kick-off, we research the client’s industry, the company itself, and compensation data for the specific role.
During the kick-off call with a client, we establish ‘must-haves’, provide clarity on our process, and set timeline expectations. This ensures that from the very beginning, everyone is on the same page.
Post kick-off call, the project team at CorTalent reviews and adjusts the job description, creates interview scorecards, write-up templates, and develops an overall search strategy. The job description and write up templates are shared back with the client before use to further confirm alignment.
The search strategy includes outreach goals to passive candidates, getting the role posted, identifying certain companies and/or industries to target, and assigning roles to each member of the project team. Part of this stage also includes creating a custom benchmark for the psychometric assessment used in the hiring process.
Sourcing and Outreach
Sourcing is something that is ongoing throughout the lifecycle of the search. CorTalent continues the search for new ‘best-fit’ candidates until an offer is signed with the client. At the onset, we utilize our search strategy of what companies, industries, and types of candidates to target and start building projects in LinkedIn and Crelate (our ATS/PM tool).
The first thing we do is look through Crelate at similar roles we have filled in the past to see if there are any candidates that fit this new client’s role. At the same time, we start researching people on LinkedIn, adding them to our project, and sending customized outreach to them about the opportunity.
Along with our other sourcing tools we also use our personal and professional networks to find and connect with people.
Candidate Vetting
This stage can be broken down into three components: resume or profile review, phone screens, and virtual interviews. We’ve covered in a recent social post what our recruiters are looking for when reviewing resumes, so if you’re interested, go check it out!
If a candidate’s background appears to align with the role, the next stage they are moved to is the phone screen stage. This is where we gather basic information on must haves for the role, and also where we sell the candidate on the opportunity and who our client is.
This is why it is crucial at the onset for us to gather so much information during the sales and kickoff process, because that better equips us to sell our client’s opportunity on their behalf. CorTalent always ensures that the candidate’s compensation and location align in this initial conversation as well.
For CorTalent’s virtual interview stage, the project team assesses the candidate based on our interview scorecard for that particular role. We ask a lot of behavioral based questions and look for them to share specific examples from their background that align with the role. This stage provides value for our clients because it narrows down the candidate pool for them to only the most qualified candidates for the role.
Candidate Presentation
Our goal is always to present only the top candidates that we see. We may phone screen 30 candidates, video interview 6 of them and present 4 or 5 so that our clients only spend time interviewing the best of the best that we have found.
To dive deeper into our process, our aim is to always present at least 1 fully vetted qualified candidate by day 30 of a search, and to have completed the search process and filling the role in 100 days or less. However, for some tough-to-fill roles that are highly unique or that are considered Executive level, the search process can take up to 120 days from kick-off to signed offer.
Combining efficiency and quality candidates is what sets us apart from other search firms. Things that could influence these timelines are complexity or specificity of the role, level of the role, and/or length of the client interview process.
These are things that we will consult with you on throughout the process so that we can adjust our approach if needed. Added value to the clients includes a write up from our interviews that mirrors the interview scorecard to communicate to the client why they should interview the candidate and tell the story that’s not on the resume.
After the client interviews the candidates presented, we request feedback on what they felt was a good match and what may have been missing. From there, we discuss where to go from there – either we will continue with the same profile or adjust it moving forward.
Assessment
Although not specifically called out in our process graphic above, during the Discovery and Strategy stage, our project team will have created a custom benchmark to compare candidate’s assessment results against. We’ve written a previous blog on our work with the Prevue Assessment, and you can find additional insights there!
It is important to note that psychometric assessments like Prevue should not be used as a knockout tool. They give our clients a more holistic picture of a candidate combined with our recommendations, their resume, and our client’s experience interviewing them. The assessment is typically used between the first and second interview in our client’s interview process.
Offer, Hire, and Post-Hire Support
The value CorTalent provides towards the end of a search is offer and hire support as well as a guarantee on our part post-hire, the length of which corresponds to the level of the hire. We are well versed in helping navigate the offer process with candidates and can act as the go-between if required.
Once you hire a candidate, we will check in with you and the candidate incrementally post-hire, around days 45 and 90, to ensure that things are going well and to head off any potential concerns.
We hope we’ve given you some insight and clarity on our recruiting process and what really goes on behind the scenes when kicking off and running a search.
For any further questions, or if you’d like to work with CorTalent on your open role(s), Connect with our team today!