The Recruiting Process: Tracking A Unicorn

Recruiting in corporate America is an interesting place. Various agencies and firms all promise the same thing: helping clients find the best talent. From the outside, it may seem like a straightforward process with a single path towards fulfillment. When you dig down and get into the weeds of it, there are a myriad of methods available. We could easily spend the next few minutes dissecting the merits of each approach. But let’s focus on how Route Networking Group approaches talent acquisition and how I find candidates for our clients.

We are very relationship-driven approach to our recruiting process. This means we spend a lot of time getting to know our clients and our candidates. Our first step is to meet with our client and their team (pre-Covid this meant visiting their office). We learn about their culture and the type of people that make up their staff. We research qualities they’re looking for in their next hire. Next, we get a job description for the position. We need to know exactly the type of skills they see as valuable and important to be successful in the role. These extra steps differentiate us as an agency: we want to partner with the clients, not just find talent for them. By learning about their organization on a deeper level, we are better equipped to find people that have the skills AND culture fit to make a strong addition to their team.

When it comes to the search itself, I start by looking for key skills in the job description. For instance, let’s say I’m searching for a Senior Software Engineer; if the job description places high importance on the Microsoft stack, I’ll focus my search around C# and .NET experience (it will vary depending on whether they need a front – end engineer or a back-end engineer). Maybe they need an Architect to help move systems to the cloud; in that case I’ll prioritize my search around AWS or Azure (dependent on the client’s stack) and experience with scalability. After finding candidates that seem to be a good match, I’ll schedule a phone call or coffee meeting. We’ll talk through their skills, as well as learning more about their career aspirations, culture fit, and previous experience. These conversations are pivotal because we learn so much more about our candidate than what is communicated in a resume by itself. While resumes are a helpful tool, more and more companies are realizing how important the right culture fit is.

This is where Route Networking shines.

Our highly tailored and personalized approach helps us get to know our candidates on a different level than simply reading a resume or LinkedIn profile. We pride ourselves on our ‘BS Detector’ and our ability to get to the heart of their practical experience and abilities. Once we’ve found candidates that we believe embody the skills, experience, and culture our client is looking for, we work through a submission process, help coordinate interviews, and listen to feedback. In some occasions, a client will realize that what they initially thought was important was not actually as high of a priority, which helps us shift and adjust our search to better align with the new information.

In the end, our recruiting process is not only highly relational and personalized to each client, it is highly collaborative. Our ultimate goal is to help our clients achieve their goals by taking the stress out of hiring. How can we partner with YOU to help you build your dream team?