If your company is planning on hiring 4-6 technical people a year,
your next hire should be a recruiter. It is probably best if they do not
have experience being a recruiter or a salescritter. Hire someone with a
liberal arts degree or technical communications experience.
If your company is hiring more than that, why don’t you already have
an in-house recruiter?
External recruiters are lying spammers. It’s the nature of the
economics: they don’t get paid until they land a candidate, but they
can’t afford to learn enough about your company or the role to get good
candidates, so they need to work in bulk. An external recruiting company
wants 20-30% of first-year salary as a fee. If you’re hiring 5 people a
year, you can afford to pay an internal recruiter the average of their
salaries, which should be quite nice indeed - external recruiters are
paid on commission, which induces feast-or-famine responses and
consequent unethical practices.
An internal recruiter can talk to your hiring managers, ask
questions, and build trust. An internal recruiter is inherently more
trustworthy to a prospective candidate, too: they can reference the
company’s name from day one, and can offer actual details
immediately.
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