As the founder and Managing Director of DWR Executive Search, I have spent the majority of my career living and working internationally and have more than 30 year’s exposure to West Africa. Why is that important and of benefit to my clients?

You would think that #recruitment is recruitment and that finding a candidate, placing them into a new role and then justifying payment is a simple, straightforward process. And in theory it is! The “process” follows a general pattern – but that pattern is multi-faceted and often complex. The variables revolve around the two entities at either end of the process: The client and the candidate. With the recruiter in the middle.

To say that each client is different is, of course, an understatement. Not only is the #HiringManager an individual blessed with their own unique personality, approach, work ethic and style of operating, the company or organisation they represent are likewise unique – it will have its own “culture”, priorities, attitude to their specific market, internal structure, external outlook, and “corporate personality”.

Correspondingly, at the other end of the process is the candidate, or job seeker: Hundreds of millions of unique characters, with unique attributes, unique attitudes, and unique personalities.

Arguably, “intuition” is an inherited gift that one either possesses or doesn’t, is born with or not. This may or may not be true, but one thing is certain – intuition is worthless if it’s not accompanied by experience.

Profiling, psychometric analysis and assigning a computer program to measure a person’s mental capacity are all very well and might (or more likely not) provide the client with an extremely vague (and therefore ultimately unreliable) approximation of a candidate’s mood, abilities and ambitions at any one time on any given day of the week, but part of a professional recruiters’ whole purpose is to define these candidate traits by utilising their intuition and experience to gauge a candidate’s suitability on the range of human-based attributes, behaviours and emotions that become apparent through personal interaction.

A recruiter shouldn’t need software to make an often life-changing judgement on a candidate’s suitability, nor should they require Artificial Intelligence as a substitute for Human Intuition.

In my travels around the world as I have worked in, operated and owned businesses providing recruitment and executive search services, one thing is clear to me – the majority of “recruiters” seem to be very clever, very dedicated (especially given the high levels of commission that motivates them), very hard working…and very young! And there’s nothing wrong with that – I was young once too!

This largely youthful business (not that recruitment itself is a newly-born baby in the world of outsourcing), which tends to run on a model that features a high number of “consultants” pitching for multiple new clients based on a principal of volume sales so as to generate as much income in the shortest period of time with client satisfaction being somewhat low on their list of priorities (I am generalising here – there are as many good recruitment companies as bad ones, of course), is fine – if that’s what the client is happy to pay for. But there is a choice and it’s that choice which distinguishes between a basic service (often provided on a “contingency basis”) and a professional one (normally provided on an exclusive basis) which rather than relying on algorithms on a laptop or so called scientific techniques to adjudicate on a human being’s true potential, instead depends on their inbuilt intuition and the experience gained over a career (a lifetime!) of real, hands-on human interaction, empathy and in-depth understanding.

Any client has the option of who to deal with (it is often said that we only actually buy a product or service from a person we instinctively like as opposed to any particular value or advantage offered by an alternative supplied by somebody we dislike), but most clients obviously prefer to engage with a professional provider of an outsourced service who has a genuine understanding of their requirements, is intimately familiar with their local environment and conditions, provides a truly personalised line of communication, and who possesses the intuition and experience that is so vital to a successful recruitment process but which can only be attained with age.

The choice for a client seeking to fill a position by outsourcing is, in my opinion, quite easily defined. They can either engage with a contingency agency recruiter, agree a moderate fee for a moderate service (perhaps with the inclusion of AI and impressively designed printouts of “Candidate Key Personality Indicators”, “Characteristic Profiles” and “Psychological Measurements”), and hope that the selection of CV’s they receive contain a candidate at least capable of doing the job even though they may not actually “fit” into the company’s culture. The risks: Lower staff retention rate; reduced commitment to the role; and the need to recruit repeatedly (and the negative financial results all these risks represent to the client).

Or they can engage with a professional provider of #ExecutiveSearch who charges more (not much more though!) but provides more value, who has extensive local as well as international knowledge accumulated over three decades, who understands their needs AND why, and with a level of experience and intuition that simply cannot be matched by any computer program or recruiter who has less than 30+ years’ worth of global dealings in the executive search sector: A professional who will not merely provide a selection of CVs but will present a shortlist of candidates that are qualified, suited to the client’s nature, and primed for interview; a professional executive search provider motivated not by a quick commission, but by a successful outcome to a recruitment process which achieves a long-term relationship beneficial to both the client AND the candidate. The Results: Higher levels of staff satisfaction; increased productivity; and better workforce retention (and that means less financial outlay on recruiting, onboarding and training – a better bottom-line at year end).

Outsourcing your recruitment requirements is a cost-effective and efficient way of acquiring the talent your company needs – but ultimately, the results depend on which recruitment provider you engage and how experienced that recruitment provider actually is.

As well as reviewing the DWR website below, you might also want to check Dominic’s LinkedIn page to review his background and business experience. https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominicryan/

DWR Expatriate & Executive Search, UK-West Africa

Ghana Tel: +233 (0) 202 800 466

Email: [email protected]

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