How to Get the Best out of Your Recruiting Partner
Working with a specialist recruitment partner can give you access to market knowledge, candidate relationships and search expertise that can be difficult to replicate internally.
But simply sending a recruiter a job description and waiting for CVs won't necessarily get you the best result.
The strongest recruitment partnerships work both ways. The more your recruiter understands about the role, the business and what you genuinely need, the better equipped they are to represent the opportunity accurately and focus their search on the right people.
1. Give Your Recruiter the Full Story
A job description is useful, but it rarely tells the whole story.
Your recruiter needs to understand not only what the successful person will do, but the context around the vacancy.
Depending on the role, useful information might include:
- Why the vacancy has arisen
- What has happened in the territory or role previously
- The products and therapy areas involved
- The main customer and stakeholder groups
- The territory and travel expectations
- The sales target and how the territory has historically performed
- How the bonus or commission scheme works
- The structure of the wider team
- Who the successful candidate will report to
- The training and support available
- What success will look like during the first six to twelve months
This information helps your recruiter do more than match keywords on a CV. It allows them to understand who is likely to succeed in the role and answer the questions good candidates are likely to ask.
2. Be Clear About What Is Essential and What Is Flexible
One of the most useful conversations you can have with your recruiter is about which requirements genuinely matter.
Does the person absolutely need experience selling the same type of product, or could somebody from an adjacent MedTech market succeed?
Do they need existing relationships within the territory, or is the ability to develop new accounts more important?
Could somebody with strong clinical experience and commercial potential be considered, or is previous sales performance essential from day one?
The more precisely you can separate genuine requirements from preferences, the more intelligently your recruiter can search the market.
A specialist recruiter should also be prepared to challenge the brief where appropriate, particularly if experience of the candidate market suggests the original criteria are unnecessarily restrictive.
3. Explain Why a Candidate Should Want the Role
Recruitment isn't only about identifying people who meet your requirements. Those people also need a reason to consider your opportunity.
This becomes particularly important when approaching candidates who aren't actively looking for another job.
Your recruiter should understand what genuinely makes the opportunity attractive.
That might include:
- An interesting or differentiated product portfolio
- A strong or underdeveloped territory
- A forthcoming product launch
- Greater responsibility or autonomy
- Access to senior leadership
- Development or progression opportunities
- A particularly strong manager or team
- An attractive salary, bonus or benefits package
- The opportunity to build something rather than inherit an established role
Not every role will offer all of these things. The important point is to identify what is genuinely attractive about yours rather than relying on generic claims about being a great place to work.
4. Give Your Recruiter Access to the Right People
The person briefing the recruiter isn't always the person who will ultimately manage the successful candidate.
Where possible, allowing your recruiter to speak directly with the hiring manager can provide valuable insight into the role, team and type of person likely to work well within it.
This doesn't require endless meetings. A focused conversation at the beginning of the search can prevent misunderstandings later and give the recruiter much more confidence when discussing the opportunity with candidates.
5. Agree How the Recruitment Process Will Work
Before the search begins, make sure everybody understands what will happen once suitable candidates are identified.
Agree:
- Who will review CVs
- How quickly feedback can realistically be provided
- How many interview stages there will be
- Who candidates will meet
- Whether presentations or assessments will be required
- Who has final sign-off on an offer
- The intended recruitment timeline
If diaries are likely to cause delays, identify that early rather than discovering it when a strong candidate is already interviewing elsewhere.
6. Give Useful Feedback Quickly
Feedback is one of the most important parts of a recruitment search.
If a candidate isn't right, telling your recruiter that they're "not quite what we're looking for" doesn't provide much information to refine the search.
Explain what was missing.
Perhaps their experience was more account management than new business. They supported a successful territory but couldn't demonstrate their own contribution to its growth. Their clinical knowledge was strong but they lacked the commercial experience you need. Or their expectations around salary, travel or progression didn't match the opportunity.
Specific feedback helps your recruiter understand what to look for differently in the next candidate.
Speed matters too. Good candidates may be involved in several recruitment processes, and unnecessary delays can result in losing someone you would otherwise have wanted to hire.
7. Listen to What the Candidate Market Is Telling You
A recruitment search can reveal useful information about how your vacancy is perceived in the market.
If several relevant candidates independently raise the same concern, it's worth paying attention.
Perhaps the salary is below what comparable candidates are earning. The territory is proving too large. The job title doesn't reflect the level of responsibility. Candidates don't understand the bonus structure. Or a particular requirement is dramatically reducing the available candidate pool.
That doesn't mean changing the role every time somebody says no.
But repeated feedback can help distinguish an individual candidate preference from a genuine problem with the brief.
8. Keep Your Recruiter Updated When Things Change
Recruitment briefs sometimes change once a search is underway.
Budgets are revised. Territories change. Another person leaves. Internal candidates emerge. Interview availability moves. A requirement that initially seemed essential becomes flexible.
Tell your recruiter as soon as possible.
If they're speaking to candidates using information that is no longer accurate, it can create confusion and damage confidence in the opportunity.
9. Work Together on the Candidate Experience
Your recruiter represents your business during part of the hiring process, but the candidate's overall experience depends on both sides.
Candidates should receive consistent information about the role, package and process. Interviews should happen when promised wherever possible, and candidates shouldn't be left waiting unnecessarily for decisions.
If delays are unavoidable, communication matters.
A candidate may be perfectly happy to wait another week if they understand why. Silence is much more difficult to interpret.
10. Give Difficult Searches Enough Depth
When a role is difficult to fill, asking several agencies to race one another to the same group of immediately available candidates isn't always the most effective approach.
Some searches need more time and depth.
A more committed recruitment partnership gives the recruiter greater scope to map the relevant market, identify people who aren't actively applying for jobs, approach them properly and learn from their response.
It also creates clearer accountability. Both client and recruiter know who is responsible for the search, communication is simpler and candidate feedback can be used to refine the approach as the search develops.
This can be particularly valuable for specialist, senior or business-critical MedTech appointments where the obvious candidate pool is limited.
What Does a Good Recruitment Partnership Look Like?
A good recruitment partnership isn't one where the client gives the recruiter a vacancy and hears from them again when a CV arrives.
There should be communication in both directions.
The client provides context, access and useful feedback. The recruiter brings knowledge of the candidate market, challenges assumptions where appropriate and communicates what they're learning from the search.
That doesn't mean every vacancy will be easy to fill.
But when both sides understand the role, share information and respond to what the market is telling them, the recruitment process has a much stronger foundation.