Technology continues to shape the way job candidates and companies find each other. But to think that online job boards or social media are the best – or only – methods of recruitment amid a changing landscape is a misnomer.

Duffy Group has a proven approach to uncover top talent. It’s called Recruitment Research.

At its core, Recruitment Research involves pinpointing candidates whose skillsets are a match for open positions and whose personalities are a cultural fit for hiring companies, too.

The process starts by creating a sound sourcing strategy to learn everything possible about the client and the job. Duffy Group uses a client intake form to put the client’s mission into perspective and to understand the company’s history, points of difference, and culture. Knowing too much about a client is never an assumption, so the client intake form is refreshed with every client search.

Once the client profile is complete, we turn our attention to the open position, reaching beyond the job description to glean as many insights as possible. This fact-finding process helps clarify what makes the position different from similar roles at other companies, competitors who have best-in-class talent, the skills that are most important, and more.

But sometimes hiring leaders don’t know what they want in employees, especially if the position is new. That’s where the due-diligence comes into play. In such cases, the practice leader draws upon details gathered in the intake form to guide the conversation, with statements such as “It looks like a sales manager with a database of customers in the Renewable Energy Industry would be advantageous.”

If it isn’t clear already, building the sourcing strategy, like other elements of Recruitment Research, requires a partnership between the client and the recruitment agency. “It’s a partnership built upon transparency and honesty,” said Victoria McCoy, former executive vice president of organizational strategy at a national data security firm and a longtime Duffy Group client.

Once the information-gathering process is complete, the real work begins.

Duffy Group’s team generally sources up to 150 candidates – many of them passive – with a goal of presenting three to five of the strongest prospects for interviews. The names, contact information and detailed notes about the remainder of the candidates are included on a spreadsheet given to the client to build the company’s talent pool.

When University of Arizona Vice Provost Tom Miller launched a national search for a dean of the College of Fine Arts, he thought his internal search committee could handle the work.

“Our search committee was effective with most aspects of the search process,” he said, “but I quickly discovered the need for a recruiting partner to build a robust candidate pool, screen candidates and facilitate the interview process between candidates and the search committee.”
The committee worked hand-in-hand with Duffy Group’s team to develop a cold-calling strategy that targeted deans, associate deans and chairs at targeted universities. This enabled the committee to share the story of the university and College of Fine Arts with candidates who otherwise may not have known or considered the opportunity, Miller said.