When we interview candidates to come and work in our own recruitment business we are often faced with applicants whose experience of the industry has been far from satisfactory. Often this is because they have worked in agencies that focus too highly on KPIs and not enough on providing the service their clients want and need.

This is how most recruitment companies operate:

Most recruitment firms judge the success of their recruiters on their ability to meet a list of targets. They will generally measure their achievements according to parameters such as the number of CVs they have sent out per week, the volume of telephone calls made and the number of hours spent on the phone.

If a recruiter is focused on having to spend two hours a day on the phone there’s a good chance that they will start to make a nuisance of themselves, either to uninterested candidates or time-starved clients. When this happens, the clients and candidates are bound to get agitated. Who wouldn’t? And the recruiter is left with the soul destroying task of having to fill time on the phone and complete KPIs.

If a recruiter is trying to meet a target for the number of CVs sent to an employer the likelihood is that the majority of these will be of poor quality. Employers will be frustrated at being bombarded with irrelevant CVs and recruiters are likely to receive the backlash. Another bad day in the office.

This is how Thornhvac operates: 

When we interview recruiters to join our business we are looking for people who want to provide a service to our clients by finding high quality candidates that meet their requirements. Even if that’s just a couple of CVs a week, that’s fine by us.

We want our recruitment consultants to spend time researching potential candidates, talking to them about their skills and ambitions and matching them to the right role. Before we even get to that point, we make sure we understand exactly what the client is looking for.

We want them to focus on what the employer wants, not on meaningless targets that have been set by their manager.

At Thornhvac success is a team thing. If our clients are happy and our candidates have found their dream job, we’ve all hit target.