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Hot Topic EARNINGS
Hot Topic EARNINGS
2 mins to read

Matchmaker, matchmaker, find me a candidate

NBR staff
Tue, 03 Apr 2012

The National Business Review got into the matchmaker business by listening to business leaders.

That’s according to NBR Talent commercial manager Jonathan Lockyer, who said NBR leaders had been listening to corporate chief executives, financial officers and procurement directors at hosted events. “They were saying business was picking up, finding talent continued to be tough and finding available budgets for recruitment was equally scarce.”

So NBR asked what it could do to help: “Give us your wish list, we said.”

What the employers wanted was pretty simple, Mr Lockyer said: “They wanted access to top market talent quickly but at a reasonable cost. They wanted to get the best from recruitment agencies but didn’t necessarily want a fullscale agency-driven process. And they wanted the ability to connect in a simpler way with the best recruitment agencies and consultants, without necessarily committing to long-term relationships.”

NBR also found that while many of the employers they spoke to had in-house resources to do much of the recruitment leg-work, what they lacked was a conduit to market talent outside their own organisations.

So NBR set about finding a way to deliver such a service to their clients and NBR Talent was born.

But what did the agencies think of this? Wouldn’t they see such a service as reducing their fees, taking away control of the relationship they held with many of their own clients? “Not at all,” Mr Lockyer said. “While there is a clear value proposition for employers [access to market talent quickly and at lower cost], there is also a clear advantage for the agencies who are NBR Talent partners.

“The value proposition to agencies is equally simple – access to clients they don’t currently work with or work not available to them from employers for cost reasons, that they could now connect to available talent on their databases. And if the fees were smaller, they would tailor the service they offered to sit more comfortably with the needs of the employers, without compromising their own full service process.”

A win-win it seems for employers and agencies but what about candidates? “The candidates are the real winners,” Mr Lockyer said. “Agencies now have more employment options for the candidates they represent and those candidates are no longer hamstrung by the potentially large fee that’s attached to their employment when looking for a role through an agency.”

The service, which launched late last year, gives employers access to professional talent at a 10% fee, and while there is a reduced service level for employers who otherwise work directly with their agency partners, there seems to be plenty of demand for NBR Talent’s candidate marketplace. 

Mr Lockyer said NBR Talent was not trying to replace the role agencies played with their clients. “However, we are in a position to revolutionise contingent recruitment and co-exist alongside more traditional recruitment models. The way we see it and the agencies that have chosen to partner with us see it, there is room for a new service level offering.”

NBR staff
Tue, 03 Apr 2012
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Matchmaker, matchmaker, find me a candidate
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