Lessons for hiring managers from Australia’s best recruiter for 2013

Peter Murphy, Partner-Davidson Recruitments has been named as Australia’s Best Recruiter in a nationwide contest organised by Stellar Recruitment. The official page of Stellar says that Murphy’s passion towards recruitment industry, coupled with required skills contributed to him being selected the winner. Impressed by his answers during the interview process, Greg Savage, one of the panelists and an industry expert and speaker, shared the details of Murphy’s interview on his blog. A specialist in sourcing Senior Executives, Managers and Finance professionals, Murphy has an excellent track record. At a time when most of the recruiters and hiring managers are striving to strike a balance between quality hiring and target pressure, Murphy’s answers can give some effective clues to do it the right way.

Here are three lessons that hiring managers can learn from Murphy’s answers:
1. Be result-driven:

Recruitment isn’t only about hiring people. It is equally about selecting the right person, in the set time-frame, as per the target requirements. When asked about his measurable success, Murphy answered, “I have always set myself the personal benchmark of delivering revenue in excess of $1 million in a year, which I regularly achieved.” What he adds further gives a peek into the way he has broken down this large target into smaller deliverable targets, “I aim to make one placement every two weeks.” This emphasizes the need to make recruitment exercise target driven. For a recruiter, it is essential to pay attention to the quality aspect as well as deadlines and targets. One quality hire won’t be a consolation for four other unclosed positions.

2. Be clear about clients’ and candidates’ requirements: A hiring managers needs to have a fair idea of what both parties want and how easy or tough it would be for both to work together. Murphy echoed this thought when he said, “Success has to be measured from both clients and candidates point of views.” This thought translates into results only when a candidate is placed in the right position and the client gets the right candidate with required skill set. The parameters against which success is measured might differ for a hiring manager and an individual recruiter, however, the metrics are similar: quality of hire, client satisfaction, culture fit, HR costs etc which matter for companies. Similarly, candidates have specific requirements when it comes to profile, package, work atmosphere, daily schedule, growth opportunities etc. These are the things translate into long-term results and are measurement of a hiring manager’s success and failures.
3. Balance between fee and margins, and value of work:
This is one aspect that often gets ignored. More and more companies prefer to reduce their hiring costs and recruiters are caught in a battle of value Vs money, balancing the two requires more than just tactfulness. Here is the ‘Murphy way’ of doing this, “My first response is to demonstrate the value being delivered. In the end, if a client is only interested in the fee, I will walk away as they don’t value my work, or I will enquire as to which part of my process they want cut.” This approach may work for recruitment agencies or individual recruiters, for hiring managers in companies this might not turn out to be as simple because there are some resource constraints and companies cannot be extravagant with hiring costs. In such cases, hiring the best possible resource, and deriving value for money becomes imperative for a hiring manager.

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