idealpeople blog

Remember the Idealpeople “Call to Arms” series we kicked off not too long ago? You know, it was the thing about changing the way a significant number of people working in the Recruitment industry are getting are doing little more than harranging businesses, firing a lot of mud at people and offering little or no added-value?

Well, to prove the whole series is not just us self-publicising or us jumping on the gravy train, I’d like to draw your mutual attention to a discussion thread over on the UK recruiter discussion forum.

It’s classic.

A Preferred Supplier list (PSL) is normally put in place by companies with significant amounts of hiring going on. It’s a way of ensuring that third-party suppliers are managed. It’s a way of ensuring that a third-party hiring methodology is streamlined and organised. Often, without a PSL hiring can be a nightmare.

However, they’re also quite a useful excuse for getting rid of sales calls. This particular blogger also looks after hiring at Idealpeople. He gets on average 10 calls a week from Recruitment-to-Recruitment agencies. Some of them he listens to, some of them he doesn’t. He’s found it much, much easier to say “Sorry, we’ve got a PSL” to agencies he doesn’t want to talk to than it is to come up with some other story as to why he can’t be bothered to read any information sent by the agency, he doesn’t want a call back and he wants to get on with his day as soon as possible. Of course, he doesn’t have a PSL.

This probably happens elsewhere, and many recruiters come up against the “We’ve got a PSL” objection frequently throughout the day. How to get around this is probably the most asked question the Idealpeople training team get. Maybe we’ll give you an answer to that at the end of this blog, but for now, take a look at some of the advice on the discussion board. We’ve taken the liberty of reprinting some of it here for you….

Sell a ghost candidate - send fake CV’s to hook the key contacts in.

Go and meet all the line managers who are the key instigators of recruitment processes - (Ignore HR) - It will get you somewhere eventually

Use empathy - “I wouldnt want the candidate to lose out, just because I have sent the CV - its not fair on the candidate”.

HR are a nuisance in the recruitment process they don’t understand half the roles and most seem to have a bad attitude. Most line managers would happily get rid of HR out the process. Most of my clients in my sector and a lot of the big corporates employ HR as paper sifters.PSL’s are not worth the paper that they are written on.

HR should stick with Sacking people and leave recruitment to recruiters.

Some of these people, and some of their views on your company’s HR function, are probably working for you (sorry, we meant sending you irrelevant CVs) right now.

We’re not even going to bother to tell you why these posters are so unutterably wrong in every way, because it should be fairly obvious. Let’s just focus on that first one - yes, you read it correctly, it says send fake CV’s [sic]. *Sigh*. Quite how these people get jobs is beyond us. Quite why their managers train them to do this is also beyond us.

As an employer, try to spot the warning signs - an inability to deliver candidates to interview, and repeated, frustrating CV duplications are both key signs of dodgy practice.

Anyway, on to the PSL objection. How about trying this approach?

1 Understand what problems have caused the company to put a PSL in place.
Establish whether this solution is working for the company. Establish whether you can solve that problem better than the PSL is currently doing.

2 Don’t just call up to say hi
This blogger will always speak to recruiters who are calling about a candidate. We’ll claim to have a PSL if they’re just calling to say hi. Make sure you call with a candidate (and we mean a *real* candidate, one who actually exists) who you know is potentially suitable to the company’s line of business (and you’ll do this through research…remember, research?).

3 Understand and don’t ignore HR
Yes, it’s normally better to speak to hiring managers. This is because hiring managers are the people who need to hire someone personally. They’re the person who knows exactly what they’re looking for. But HR will *need* to be involved, and loved. Having the approach of “avoid them at all costs* will only come back and bite you. HR are responsible for on-boarding and training - they need to be involved.

It would be interesting to hear from people in HR on this