How To Find The Perfect Recruiting Partner in the Software Industry

Last Updated: December 16, 2021

Hiring the best talent in the software industry is a challenge. To stay on top of the competition, finding the right recruiting partner is critical to success. Learn what makes a perfect partner from recruiting expert, Amy Arenz of Concero.

In the world of software, business moves at lightning speed. To keep up with the competition, software companies need partners that can bring flexibility to the marketplace and remain agile every single day.
 
For traditional contingent recruiters, this can pose an incredible barrier. Frequent changes to hiring priorities and high volume hiring spikes can make it hard to keep up if you don’t have the right tactics and approach. Additionally, contingent firms, who rely on placement fees to stay in business, are focused, not on supporting a long-term hiring strategy, but instead earning commissions by filling the easiest roles.
 
To find the perfect partner, you need to know the right questions to ask. Not all recruiters are equal and, in recent years, firms like ours have been innovating to address the need for increased flexibility from our clients. This effort has included the introduction of service offerings and payment models that are specifically designed to meet the unique, everchanging, needs of fast-moving software companies.

As you begin your search for the perfect recruitment team that can support your business, there are three areas to investigate to ensure you are working with someone who can be an effective recruiting partner.

Full-Service Offerings:

While professionals focused on product development are undoubtedly a critical element of a software company’s success, the go-to-market team is just as necessary to launch a product. 
 
Great recruiting partners bring expertise in both technical and go-to-market roles to bear on behalf of your company. Having a single firm that can support you across all your hiring needs saves time and money that would typically be lost when working with, and training, several recruitment partners who each only can service a single skillset of your company. Additionally, a single agency streamlines communications for your internal HR team, simplifying the setting of hiring priorities and providing an easier path for feedback to travel between a recruitment partner and your internal team.
  
Beyond just broad expertise and communications efficiency, an often-overlooked element of selecting a recruitment partner is that they will serve as an extension of your marketing team. The outreach they do will often be the first contact industry professionals have with your organization. Having a single firm who understands what you do inside and out, and can speak the software language to both technical hires and go-to-market prospects, can build your reputation in the software community and provide you a critical edge in securing in-demand talent.

Scalability:

Finding a full-service partner is a significant advantage, but a flexible partner is equally important. Influxes of funding or seasonal spikes can lead to periods of high hiring need followed by slower periods where the urgency of hiring is less present. This ebb and flow require an ideal recruiting team to provide service offerings designed to be scalable to the current needs of the company they are working with.
 
Innovating in this category is necessary – for example, one solution my company utilizes is a team-based recruitment model focused on giving clients significantly more control to adjust candidate flow and the associated costs to suit ever-changing needs. This type of approach to recruiting, with a number of specialized skill sets internally, allows for quicker candidate acquisition and at a higher quality. The team-based model is a significant departure from the traditional contingent recruitment model and delivers results faster and more cost-effectively to our clients.

Payment Structure:

To achieve maximum value, a full-service, scalable recruiter must also deploy a flexible payment model that can match the needs and resources of your company.
 
For example, our team has pioneered a recruiting payment model not centered around placement fees, but built around the highly successful subscription-based payment models like Software-as-a-Service. New models not focused on placements fees, enables recruiters to provide an unprecedented level of flexibility to company leaders and be a partner in the long-term hiring strategy of clients.

Subscription-based pricing plans also empower recruiters to tackle the hard-to-fill, unlike contingent recruiters who look for the low hanging fruit. This type of fee structure maximizes the value software organizations get per dollar all while charging a predictable monthly fee, instead of a base-salary percentage. Additionally, these types of contracts can be for durations as short as three months, providing flexibility for companies who are navigating fluctuations in hiring.

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Finding Your Perfect Partner:

As you consider adding a recruiting firm to your team, investigate these capabilities to make sure that your potential partner has the depth of skills, as well as the scalability needed to support your organization long-term.
 
The best-recruiting partners for any business, especially in software, are organizations with which you can build lasting relationships. To be a true partner, they must be able to adapt to your needs and be just as agile as your internal team.
 
The ability to secure and retain talent is an enduring challenge for all companies, but especially in the highly competitive software industry. By partnering with the right team of recruiting experts who can provide you full service recruiting support, while not sacrificing on the flexibility needed to succeed, you can save money and shed your hiring woes!
 
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Amy Arenz
Amy Arenz

CEO & Founder, Concero

As Concero Founder and CEO, Amy has proven to be a fearless yet compassionate leader throughout her career. Her ability to be quick and decisive when navigating challenging situations is a testament to her strong entrepreneurial work ethic. With over 25 years of experience, Amy brings a broad understanding of the Recruitment Industry with a full spectrum of learnings from her time starting as a staffing consultant in a permanent placement agency to working as a key member of the executive recruiting team.
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