We are fortunate to have created mutually beneficial enterprise-level relationships with many of our clients. This invaluable approach to relationship management drives significant efficiency and mutual value for all parties (i.e., the recruitment firm, the hiring organization, and most importantly, the candidate).
When all stakeholders are invested in the hiring process, you will typically observe the following:
Unfortunately, many recruitment firms can share many a war story about clients who delegate this critical hiring process to bureaucratic underlings that measure success by how successful they were at negotiating the lowest recruitment fees, staying laser focused on hiring to the target salary range versus hiring for fit, growth potential and experiential diversity. These internal client-side hiring resources may also rely too heavily on the use of technology and algorithms to compute to a shortlist versus balancing the use of technology and keeping the process somewhat humanistic.
Having said all of this, recruitment firms need to socialize the benefits of establishing enterprise relationships with their clients and the true shareholder equity/value that it creates.