Employers - how do you find candidates?

[FWIW]

Do you prefer to use a recruiter to trawl the jobsites for you and charge you 25% of the salary, or do you do the trawling yourself and pay the monthly fee(s)?
If the latter, do you have a preferred website - do you us multiple ones?

What works for you?

[StevieBee]

Been a few years since I took anyone on but my preferred method was to self advertise on sites specific to our sector and review the incoming applications.

I place a lot of weight in how anyone makes the first approach be it to sell me something or apply for a job. I like to see that instructions on how to apply have been followed and also gauge their approach.

So if the ad required them to send a CV with a covering letter that explains why they think they're right for the role and all I got was an email saying 'Please see attached my CV in relation to the job', rarely, if ever, did I look at the CV.

I have used professional recruiters for higher-managerial type roles with mixed success.

[andy_ran]

I have used the same specialist recruiter since I started my firm 16 years ago

We have tried the direct route, and it does work sometimes but its a slog and often far more no-shows too

I have however got a very good rate with my recruiter and its nothing like the 25% that a lot of them are trying to charge

[Countdown]

Finance here for perm positions our in-house HR team will advertise (Indeed, LinkedIn, TotalJobs, GAAPWeb). For temp positions we have 5 Agencies on our preferred supplier list (Hays, Michael Page, Robert Half)who have all agreed 12% commission maximum.

[Countdown]

andy_ran said:

I have however got a very good rate with my recruiter and its nothing like the 25% that a lot of them are trying to charge

One of ours wouldn't budget from 33%. 12 months later they phoned us back and asked why we weren't sending them any vacancies. They've now agreed to a maximum of 15% but we'll only go to them if the others can't get us suitable candidates.

[M1AGM]

I use indeed. Get a lot of applications, most of which is dross so takes a little time to wade through, but we do get hires that way, and it is not expensive.