Why do you need to search databases if you are already advertising on job boards?

• Although it varies greatly, searching databases normally adds half a dozen or so relevant candidates who are interested in your vacancy, but who have not applied to it. There are potentially many reasons for this, here are just two; Firstly, although candidates might be registered on databases they might not be actively searching for jobs. Secondly, despite how well we write the advert some roles are not easily definable. One of our clients likes to recruit retail managers to change their career and work in his industry. By contacting retail managers and seeing if they are open to changing industries we have dramatically improved the number of candidates our client has to interview.

• Firstly, client communication is key here. We look to talk with clients and understand what types of profiles or people, industries and companies, they have previously sourced staff from. Then we look to reproduce this in our searches. Once we have found our shortlist we contact all of the potential applicants via email and SMS text to see if they would be interested in being put forward for the position. Only candidates who confirm they are definitely interested in the position get put forward.

• We search all of the major databases including Monster, CV Library, TotalJobs etc. In addition to this we also search our own internal database. Our own internal database is updated with 15-20,000 applicants each month, these are applicants who have applied to our adverts.

• We used to charge clients £250 to search and contact candidates. However, we decided to include it as standard when we noticed it consistently delivered an extra group of candidates to the shortlist forwarded to the client.