Talented North East Candidates Overlooked

May 2011

Talented North East candidates are being overlooked for job vacancies, because companies are choosing to use national or international recruitment companies instead of local ones.

It’s a fact that finding the right people is best done using tried and trusted contacts and networks, particularly in the Aberdeen Oil and Gas industry.  So why do companies engage very large, multinational recruitment agencies to do their recruitment?

Well of course the short answer is cost. The multinational agencies use economies of scale and extensive data bases to reduce their margins and provide a volume of potential candidates for their clients.

This is false economy according to Aberdeen based consultancy Project Excellence who claim that by-passing local companies with specialist local knowledge and contacts, means that highly experienced candidates with in demand skills are being overlooked.

Mike Howard a partner with Project Excellence said:

"The preferred method of finding people in the industry is being hindered by the fact that small local specialist providers are excluded from the recruitment process for large companies through short-sighted, cost driven recruitment strategies."

"Our clients often get frustrated when they are provided with large numbers of poor CV’s from the multinational agencies. Our clients end up doing work that the agency should have done, wading through the CV’s to find the best candidates whereas small  specialist companies like ours can provide a more focussed set of candidates, all of which can be considered as a good fit for the role," added partner Dr Clive Randall.

"At Project Excellence we know many of the individuals well, we meet many of them through our technical networking sessions and social evenings and often they will have worked through us on other projects which is a huge plus."

"We also hear of clients engaging London based executive search agencies because they had a top position to fill when clearly the knowledge and ability to provide a better, cost effective service resides locally.

The right answer is clearly to utilise a flexible recruitment strategy that includes local specialist providers on personnel supply lists."

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