HR departments and third-party recruiters often go at it with hammers and tongs since each side thinks the other side is…problematic. You don’t need an organizational development specialist to tell you this is not a healthy business relationship.
BusinessWeek.com approaches this topic in How Recruiters and HR Can Work Together. The article starts with a tactical point that we encounter during every negotiation:
In my experience, the greatest service a third-party search partner provides to the organization, besides the strength of his or her candidate database and relationships, is the intermediary role a search pro performs during offer negotiation. I pride myself on good listening and negotiating skills, but if I’m inside the company, I won’t have the same credibility with a candidate that his ally, the outside recruiter, has.
So it makes sense to let the recruiter handle the delicate job (BusinessWeek, 11/26/07) of negotiating between the employer (“our offer is good enough already!”) and the candidate (“they’re dreaming if they think I’ll take this job for that salary”) when the stakes are high. We do it when we buy or sell a house. We know that our trusted Realtor won’t be as emotionally bound up in the negotiation as we very well may be. It’s the same in a high-level offer negotiation process—a place where the middleman can get us more quickly to a handshake and save egos in the process.
The author is absolutely correct. In fact, some of our customers have us present the offer and work through the negotiation with the candidate. As appreciative as we are to do this work, we still put the final close to our customer and the candidate. However, we are able to have extremely candid discussions with the candidate; discussions I am certain would not happen directly with the hiring company.
Here is a good tip:
When I was a corporate HR person, I learned to invite my search partners into the office once every six months or so for a check-in meeting. In this way I learned that partnering with trusted search colleagues is one of the highest-yield moves an HR leader can make. Search pros will tell you things that candidates never would (e.g., “no one will work for Jane Smith any more—she’s a terrible manager”) and will fill you in on the state of the local job market with a level of detail you’d never have time to acquire on your own.
We’ve done this type of work frequently for our customers. This type of information and insight is highly valuable from an outside source.