4 Questions to Ask an IT Recruitment Agency Before You Sign

Choosing the right tech recruitment agency partner isn’t easy. With so much riding on a new hire, and an abundance of IT recruitment agencies offering seemingly identical services, it can be hard to work out who’s really good at their job, and who’s just going to promise the moon and deliver Earth. So to make life a bit easier, below you’ll find everything you need to choose the right recruitment agency for IT jobs, including a handful of questions to help you find out whether they’re going to get you a brilliant tech hire, or just leave you high and dry.

Why recruitment fees shouldn’t be a major factor in your IT agency decision

If you asked an IT recruiter what criteria tech hiring managers should use when choosing an IT recruitment agency, most would tell you not to use recruitment fees. And they’d be right: fees tell you very little about the chances of a recruitment agency finding your dream candidate. A low fee on a search that drags on for three months usually ends up costing more than a higher fee on a search that closes in four weeks. Instead, focus your efforts on finding out the level of prep work they undertake before submitting candidates, their guarantee if your chosen candidate falls through, the calibre of the weekly reports they’ll provide, and who will be working on your role.

The 4 questions you should ask any IT recruitment agency (with examples of good answers)

What can you do for me that I can’t already do?

If an agency has a one-size-fits-all approach, it’s clear that all they’re interested in is selling you their service. But if an agency understands your goals and pain points, and offers a flexible service to accommodate them, it’s more likely they’ll be able to add value. EvoTalents, for instance, splits its services into six tiers so tech hiring managers can choose what they need:

• Sourcing support: flexible sourcing and talent acquisition support for teams that already have recruiters, covering technical market mapping, competitor analysis and passive candidate attraction
• Partial-cycle recruitment: for teams that have HR or recruiters but need additional support. The agency researches the role and candidate persona, engages with candidates and agrees a shortlist with you, handing over before interviews
• Full-cycle search: for hard-to-fill roles, with the agency taking care of all candidate communication and management
• Embedded recruitment: a flexible, high-touch recruitment service that gives you visibility and control over your pipelines, for companies hiring multiple roles or running large recruitment drives
• Executive search: discreet searches for technical and non-technical C-level roles
• Training for in-house teams: hands-on training in role profiling, Boolean, LinkedIn and AI searching, engaging with passive candidates and attracting more women into tech

Once you’ve established what support you need, you can dig a little deeper to find out how quickly they think they can get candidates to you, and how they make sure those candidates are relevant. You want an agency that understands that the CV is the end product of their research, not the starting point. A good answer will cover what happens before any candidates are submitted:

• A research call with you to really understand what the ideal candidate persona looks like and prioritise must-haves and nice-to-haves
• Research into the tech market and competitors hiring similar people
• Drafting search strings and testing their relevance
• Drafting screening questions to understand experience, expectations and interest

And what happens once candidates start to come in:

• Screening CVs for relevance
• Speaking to candidates to check interest, salary expectations and notice period
• Booking calls and interviews

These answers will give you a sense of whether speed, for that agency, means a deeper understanding of the profile or a loose filter, in which case you’ll end up spending more time rejecting CVs than scheduling interviews. In technical hiring, the shortlist doesn’t need to be big, it needs to be relevant.

How do you report on progress?

A good IT recruitment company will report to you every week on progress, outlining the number of candidates approached, the level of interest, feedback and any changes of approach. They should also share any relevant market insight, such as unexpected competitor hires or changes in salary levels. The best agencies use this space to give you relevant feedback about the role: where it isn’t attractive (candidates rejecting it on salary), where you need clarity (the title doesn’t resonate with the market), and where the role description needs tweaking (too broad to resonate with specialists, or an unrealistic geography).

How does your guarantee work?

Unfortunately, even once you think you’ve landed your dream tech hire, candidates can still fall through at the eleventh hour. Whether it’s a last-minute counteroffer or communication falling down during a complicated notice period, a recruitment agency guarantee can come in handy. A guarantee shows how much skin an agency has in the game. With any IT recruitment agency UK businesses work with, dig deep into what’s covered, for how long, and whether probation is included. An offer isn’t safe just because a candidate has accepted it, so the agency should stay involved until the new hire has actually started, especially with passive and more senior candidates.

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Who will be working on my role?

Hiring software engineers in Canada, the USA, LatAm, Europe and the UK comes with unique challenges in each region, and it takes a nuanced understanding of each local candidate market. When choosing an agency partner, ask who will be working on your role, how much tech sector and regional experience they have, how they keep on top of tech talent trends and developments, and whether they can explain the differences between candidate markets in plain terms. Ask, too, how many other roles they are carrying at the moment, since a recruiter juggling fifteen searches won’t give yours the attention it needs.

You should also ask about candidate experience. After all, candidates are hardly clamouring to get into a queue for roles. So to stand out, you need to offer the best possible experience, and your recruitment agency has a massive say in this. Ask how candidates are kept in the loop throughout the process, how feedback is provided and how respectful your agency is with regard to a candidate’s time, career and salary expectations. Ultimately, candidates will talk, and a poor experience with your agency could sour your employer brand and close the door on future hires.