Of course, for the recruiter-client relationship to be super successful, it’s a two-way street. In other words, we can make one anther’s jobs a whole lot easier.

You want the best person for your business and while every recruiter worth their salt will spend time getting to know what you need and what you stand for, you can take away the guesswork with a damn good brief. Include:

- Tech spec: what skills should they have?
- Person spec: what qualities are essential to the role?
- Background: detail any must-have experience

Make the best choice, for YOU: Choosing the wrong recruitment agency can be hugely frustrating (not to mention time consuming and costly – yikes!) So before you make that call, you need to think about a recruiter’s overall suitability.

- Do they specialise in your market, or recruit in your discipline?
- How long have they been in the game? We’re not knocking start-ups, but sometimes you just want a tried and tested expert that gets results.
- What value can they add? Aside from bums on seats recruitment, it makes sound business sense to work with someone who can give you that little bit more (to give you a point of reference, we run networking events, produce market insight reports, carry out salary benchmarking… we could go on).
- Are they consultative? You want someone who’s bothered. Bothered about what you need. Bothered about what your company’s trying to achieve.

Write a killer job spec: Looking for the right hire is a thankless job if you’re not clear about what it is you’re looking for – or what the ‘right hire’ is actually going to be doing. When you pen the all-important job spec, you need to give key details about:

- Your company - The team (what’s the general vibe? How about the size?)
- The role
- The rewards
- Your ideal (what does the perfect candidate actually look like? Who’d fit your company culture?)

Communication is crucial: Great recruiters (like us) never give your candidates a chance to lose interest. We know that if you want them, other people will want them too, so we keep in contact. But communication is just as important from you guys. If anything changes or causes delays, just let us know.

Wow. Recruiters are great, aren’t they? Well, we certainly think so. And hopefully, after reading our how-to guide, you have a much better idea of how to get the best out of them (us).

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