By Barney Horne
In the first article, I shared my thoughts on using recruitment agencies both as a Quality Assurance (QA) professional when I was looking for new opportunities, and as a manager when I was hiring QA professionals for my departments. In this article, I am focusing on what companies should consider when choosing a recruiter for hiring QA professionals.
Firstly, hiring for QA is not as simple as filling an open position. We in QA are a peculiar and specialised bunch of folks, with very specific technical, experiential and behavioural characteristics. Most companies do not have large QA groups, but their impact can be great, especially if they “get it wrong!”. There are generally fewer really good QA candidates out there than there are open positions, especially if the posts to be filled are senior and/or highly specialised positions. Which all means that QA professionals can often afford to be choosy about which company they decide to work for.
This leads to the next point: a skilled recruiter will use their expertise to match the QA professional to the company, to make sure the post is filled with exactly what will work for the company’s needs. This is not just a matter of meeting the requirements of the job description, but also in terms of the "fit" between candidate and company, considering quality culture, company values and ambitions. When hiring, I have often used the concept of a "person description" that goes beyond the job specifications to takes account of these more intangible characteristics.
Thirdly, the recruiter must be able to "sell" the company successfully, so that these picky QA people are interested enough to pursue the opportunity being offered. As I have said in the previous article, nothing is guaranteed to be a greater turn-off than a scatter-gun approach to recruiting, when the approach appears to be taking little account of the relevance of the position to the potential candidate. The successful recruiter must be able to represent the company and position in a way that speaks to the candidate so that they don’t simply put the phone down, or press "delete".
My final point is one that is sometimes forgotten by companies’ HR departments when hiring for QA. The first contact that a potential candidate has with a company new to them is via the recruiter, which means that the recruiter becomes the "face of the company". Every candidate approached, whether that candidate is successful or not, will gain a strong impression of the hiring company through that interaction with the recruiter. A poorly prepared or inexperienced recruiter has the potential to do a great deal of harm to a company’s reputation if they deliver a bad pitch. I recall several lack-lustre and ill-informed conversations with recruiters that did nothing to enhance my opinion of the hiring company. On a more positive note, I have had interactions that have made me really want to join a company, based initially on inciteful, informed and articulate recruiter discussions.
To conclude, whenever a company is looking to hire a QA professional, think about the impact of the position you are filling. With all the factors I have outlined above to consider, if you are not already using a specialist QA recruiter, you probably should be.
Read Part 1