If your office has that empty feeling,
hire someone to do your hiring
By Christine Selvig • Bankrate.com

With unemployment at historically low levels, it's not as easy as it used to be for small business owners to fill vacancies. It might be time to get help from an employee recruiting firm.

Recruiters, she says, save their clients time and money by offering a wider pool of prequalified candidates and valuable advice about the salary and incentives needed to attract the best candidates.

The cost
How much will you pay? Everything's negotiable, but expect to pay as much as 35 percent of the new hire's first-year salary. You'll pay more if you expect fast service and want the recruiter to handle all aspects of hiring, from prescreening to interviewing. Expect to save if you have some time to fill the position and you're willing to do some of the grunt work yourself.

Fees in some industries are also less, so shop around. The fee for the hospitality industry, for example, starts at about 10 percent, according to Carrie Schoenwetter of Management Recruiters in Minneapolis. The industry average for clerical and administrative employees recruited directly, according to Gordon Bingham, Olsten's vice president of marketing, is typically 1 percent per $1,000 of the employee's base salary, up to 30 percent.

How do you start? With more than 100,000 recruiting professionals out there, they're not tough to find. Try the Yellow Pages.

Many recruiters specialize in certain industries or professions. Office Mates 5 in Cheyenne, Wyo., places engineers; M-R CompuSearch works with leading-edge technology professionals; Schoenwetter's group specializes in the insurance industry and Angel Group Network's recruiters place seven different categories of professionals.

Before the first meeting with a recruiter, experts say, a company needs to clearly define the position to be filled. One recruiter urges her clients to provide a list of the ideal candidate's expected accomplishments during the first few months or year on the job. Dan Moffitt, owner and general manager of Snelling and Snelling in Boca Raton, Fla., says small businesses are by nature less bureaucratic and less tied to the written word. "They should at least sit down and know in their own minds what they are looking for," Moffitt says.

You get what you pay for
As you negotiate with different recruiters, be careful not to lowball yourself out of the best candidates.

"The higher the fee, the more attention the recruiter will pay to the assignment," says Barbara Beard, vice president of Angel Group International, a high-tech recruiting firm based in Louisville, Ky. "If the position is especially difficult to fill, the company paying the highest fee will attract the best candidates. Recruiting is a function of pure market economies," Beard says.

Make yourself attractive
You'll also need to sell yourself.

Prepare a statement on your company's background, including what the business has already accomplished and what is planned, Moffitt says. That will help give candidates a reason to make a change.

Setting time aside to meet with candidates and being ready to make a decision once a suitable candidate has been found are extremely important, the pros say. "You need to be quick about making up your mind," Moffitt says. "If the person is right, you need to move quickly. In this market, if you delay too long you will lose the opportunity."

-- Posted: Sept. 16, 1999