Frequently Asked Questions
It is the best working relationship for all of us – you, the recruitment team, and the candidates.
A bit of background first – traditional recruitment agencies are staffed with recruiters paid primarily on commission. When competing with other agencies to fill the same position, their temptation is to send resumes to a client as quickly as possible (“claim the name”). This leaves a client with a candidate that probably isn’t screened as well as they would like, and who may not even be knowledgeable about the position, especially if the recruiter has “sold” the candidate on the idea of submitting their resume, often extending the truth whilst doing so. Traditionally it made sense for a client to choose multiple agencies of this type to work with, as it theoretically increased the volume of resumes received, but unfortunately at the expense of quality, transparency and eventually for the chances of hiring and retaining someone to excel in the role for many years. It’s simply not an efficient way to work.
It’s also not our approach. In fact, we only engage under exclusive appointment with our clients. When we work exclusively we have the time to invest heavily into understanding your business, the role and the bigger picture details that will make all the difference before we begin a search for the right person. Naturally we manage all of the search, the selection, the screening, and shortlisting – we may even work with or manage other recruitment agencies. But you as the client, work only with us – one point of contact, one team that is well informed. You can rest assured that you have a team behind you who is living and breathing the role they are recruiting for you. A team that feels the responsibility to fill that role, knowing that there is no-one else who will do it if we don’t. Whereas recruiters who do not work exclusively, often just gravitate to the easy to fill roles amongst their roster of clients (to secure easy commissions), whilst hoping someone else appointed by the same client may fill the tougher roles for them.
For good candidates it can actually be counter-productive to have multiple agencies trying to contact them for the same role with a potential employer. When multiple agencies are commissioned by the same client, they often all end up approaching similar candidates, especially for executive and expert based roles. Imagine being called or contacted at work by several different recruitment teams. That sends a confusing message. It also encourages recruiters to make their pitch ever more enticing to the candidate, thereby passing on possible confusion or extensions of the truth about the role. That’s another key reason exclusivity works, because the candidates will only ever have discreet, coordinated contact with a single recruiter. Relationships are formed, greater understanding is the result, and a more effective screening process and matching process.
We find that our clients and our candidates are delighted at how well things work under this arrangement, and we hope that you will be delighted too. FYI – our exclusive appointment only lasts for 30 days, so technically it’s not exclusive forever. However, we are so confident that you will have received great results within 30 days, we know that you will not need to look elsewhere for results.
Firstly, these are just resumes from a database that a recruiter has been able to do a simple keyword match for. The resume itself may be a few years old, it may be inaccurate, and usually the recruiter has no idea about the current situation of the owner of that resume. They also have no idea if this person is within your budget, is still contactable, is interested in working for your company, could start in time for your needs, or is even a good culture fit. For these reasons we find “resume farming” to be a considerable waste of time. We do however, understand that a quick database search for benchmarking or to see if rare skills are available can be worthwhile.
Nevertheless, we never just send resumes to you. Before we present a resume, we need to understand the human element behind it. We like to fully screen a potential candidate so that we can provide you with the essential information you need to consider whilst reviewing the resume of any potential candidate. Therefore, we always speak with the candidate to check the accuracy of information in their resume, to see if they may be interested in the opportunity to work for you, to check their availability, as well as their current and expected earnings and benefits packages. A short behavioral and skills-based interview is also done in order to determine their suitability for your role, and to check for the right culture-fit. Only once we have this information do we feel it is time to share a resume with you. At this stage it is not just a resume, it has become an introduction to a well-suited, vetted and informed candidate who is now in a position to be screened by you for the role. Our vetted candidates eliminate time wasting associated with reviewing resumes of candidates who have not even been contacted about the role they are being presented for.
For these reasons we never shoot simple, keyword matched resumes at you from the hip. We are thorough, detailed and eager to look into all the factors that determine a true match for your business needs, your culture and for the specific role itself.
Where other recruitment agencies would send you countless resumes from their keyword search in the hope of an eventual commission if you hire, our approach is methodical and effective. It is also a collaboration – you want the best talent for your budget, we want to earn your business by making that process efficient, effective, and affordable.
A deductible initial fee (Ksh 14,000) is a commitment by you to use our professional services. This is not an additional fee, it is deducted from the success fee, which is only charged upon hire of a candidate.
Once engaged, we’ll kick things off with a business-lead starter session. We’ll look at your recruitment needs as part of a holistic plan to support your bigger picture goals. From here we design a comprehensive recruitment plan, implement it with the input of several professionals, prioritize you, and add your company to our “do not poach” list. We never simply take a job description and scan our database for matches to send to you, we act as your professional talent matching and sourcing team by doing the following:
- creating (or modifying an existing) job description that is compelling, compliant and culturally appropriate. scanning multiple databases for currently available candidates.
- publishing ads on the major sites, plus our online social network and offline talent network. We even engage our network of specialist referrers.
- headhunting and passive candidate sourcing using the latest international sourcing strategies and tools for recruiters, modified specially for the Kenyan talent market.
- we then screen all candidates personally to ensure they are enthusiastic and that their resumes are correct. We extract the most pertinent information about their current earnings, expected earnings, reasons for exploring, availability to start and why they are suitable for hire.
- we produce a final shortlist that we present to you for interview, detailing all of the information you need to make a hiring decision.
- we handle appointment setting, negotiate your job offers (if preferred), keeping renumeration fair and the conversations balanced.
- we can also manage and coordinate other recruitment agencies, and support your in-house HR team.
We prefer flat fees.
Old-school recruitment agencies love their % fees and small print as the standard practice, but we like to keep things simple: a small, predictable, deductible flat-fee to initiate our service, and a fair success fee based upon a monthly multiplier of the employee’s gross earnings, with no 13th month included. This ensures our focus is on you as our client, not on maximizing the value of the candidates’ package to potentially earn higher fees.
Of course everything can become a percentage depending on how you look at it. But with our fee structure we have the equivalent percentage rates of 12.5-18.75% of an annual salary, depending on the search type you have engaged us for. All rates are competitive, and the Bliss HR difference lies in our service to clients and candidates, our business knowledge and our consultative approach. Combine this with unrivalled search capabilities and a unique network reach, and you will see what make us stand out from the rest.
Most services start with a low initial fee (Ksh 14,000), deducted from an affordable flat-rate success fee once the talent is found, and the hire is complete.
We are the first recruitment firm in Kenya to transparently present our full pricing schedule online, combined with an e-commerce option to reserve and initiate our service through our website via Mpesa. We are also the only firm in Kenya to offer dedicated lower recruitment fees by using a multiplier of the candidate’s monthly earnings, instead of the standard percentage of an annual salary being used to determine the success fee. Furthermore, we don’t include the 13th month pay when calculating our service fees.
Absolutely! We expect candidates you hire to be highly suited to the role you offer, both culturally and skills-wise. When you hire a candidate we introduce, we’ll guarantee to provide you with an alternative candidate for the same position if the original candidate leaves within 2 to 6 months (depending on the search service terms we offer per category).
2 to 6 months is – in our experience – plenty of time for a candidate to settle nicely into the role you’ve hired them for. If you are looking for a longer guarantee, the role may not be well matched to the candidate profile you are currently using.
Good jobs, well presented to the right candidates, are prized. In our experience it’s unusual for a correctly-vetted candidate to leave a position, or for clients to request a replacement. Perhaps our clients’ high retention rate is because we spend so much time evaluating your position and creating a candidate-match profile – of course, we also do all of the initial screening and shortlisting, and we treat the candidate like golden talent, managing their expectations every step of the way. That is why we are so confident that you’ll never need to use our guarantee.