I’d be keen to know the views, and experiences others have had on this. What has worked best for your business?

• A) Recruiting non experienced recruiters and training them from scratch?
• B) Recruiting experienced recruiters who should hit the ground running?

From my ‘personal’ experience, I’ve always seen greater results recruiting individuals with no experience in recruitment, and in many cases no sales experience either. They’ve always started with an ice cold desk, and learned the role as their desk develops. In most cases, every individual I’ve trained from scratch has achieved their first placement within the first 2 months.

On the other side of the coin I’ve also hired ‘experienced’ recruiters, all with a minimum 2 years experience. When looking at the records, the time it takes for the experienced recruiters to generate their first placement has been exactly the same; 2 months.

I use the first placement scenario purely as an example of comparison. When I’ve compared the first year fees generated I’ve also found very little difference between the two.  

It would be intriguing to see what the majority preference is in hiring.

• A) Hiring non experienced recruiters, training them from scratch

OR

• B) Hiring experienced recruiters