The agency side of recruiting in today’s market has some glaring flaws. Working with an agency should give your company a competitive advantage, not feel like a necessary evil.

Here are 3 things you should look for in your business relationships with outside recruitment firms:

COLLABORATION & ORGANIZATION

The biggest gap in the recruitment process of today’s agencies is a lack of collaboration.

Unless your recruitment agencies know your company better than you, only you truly understand who’s best for your organization. Therefore, your day-to-day interaction should feel like you’re working together to find the right candidates.

“What communication structures do your recruitment agencies have in place to listen to you and share results?”

You shouldn’t feel like they don’t ask enough questions or that you’re pestered by them for feedback. By providing a formalized process, a recruitment agency can eliminate the chore of back-and-forth emails and give you confidence that your feedback is being heard.

As a service provider, too few agencies make the extra effort to keep a job requisition organized and information accessible. A recruitment agency should allow you to maintain your hiring process and tracking system while meeting the increased demands of your open positions.

“Are you able to easily step back and look at the entire candidate picture for each of your openings?”

It takes extra effort and more than email to make candidate information easily accessible. You need to see the value in your agencies’ entire service week-in and week-out. Some great collaboration tools to look out for that can make your experience working with an agency better include Trello and Breezy HR. Even communication software like Slack and Sococo can be great for making communication more fluid.

FLEXIBILITY & CONSISTENCY

Ultimately, a recruitment firm should act more like a business partner than a temporary service provider and should make the recruitment process seamless.

You should expect an agency to consistently produce a number of candidate options in your expected timeframe and for any number of open positions.

“How well can you rely on your agencies to meet your hiring demands?”

The whole point of outsourcing your recruitment process is to ensure that part of your business is effectively supported.

A recruiting partner of yours should understand what it means to grow an organization effectively and strategically. As your needs change, an agency should work with you to understand your market and have the flexibility to adapt their offering.

“Do you feel in control of your hiring process when working with outside firms?”

Your only focus should be interviewing the candidates you want so that you minimize your time spent.

They source the candidates and arrange the interviews, but controlling the hiring process is an important part of maintaining the quality and culture of your team.

PROVIDING GROWTH

Working with a recruiting firm does not need to be transactional experience.

A collaborative process means that they should be your partner in attracting the best talent to your organization. The best talent needs more than a sales pitch to come work for you – they need to buy into your mission, values, purpose and culture. That starts at your brand.

“Everyone has difficulty finding top talent, but do you have the right brand to attract that talent?”

Your brand is your first touchpoint with any candidate, which makes it one of the most important parts of the recruitment process.

If a recruiting firm isn’t relying on your brand to find candidates, how can they assure they’re placing the candidate somewhere that’s right for them? The goal of any hire should be a fit that lasts long-term.

“Are qualified candidates not accepting your offers?”

There may also be other parts of your candidate experience that could be holding you back from finding the right candidates.

In a collaborative recruitment effort, you should get feedback about what parts of your brand resonates with candidates and what parts of your interviewing or hiring process could be turning candidates away.

As a partner in your recruitment process, an agency needs to identify what improvements can be made to attract the talent you want.

This post is by Brooks Golden. Brooks comes from several years of working on the agency side of recruiting. After witnessing enough dysfunction, he found the opportunity to change the recruitment industry for the better at Capa. He’s passionate about forward thinking businesses and a culture of giving back. You can follow him at Capa Consulting Group’s blog and on Twitter.