In response to the abundance of advice to recruiters on ‘what makes a great recruiter’, the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) has surveyed its members to find what it means to be a great client.

While communication is obviously fundamental to building successful client relationships, the survey found that fairness and realistic budgeting are also key to building strong ties with employer organisations. APSCo surveyed over 70 consultancies during the study. Communication, fairness and realistic understanding of budgets and timescales were seen as the most attractive attributes in a client (with 83 percent, 79 percent and 79 percent of members respectively ranking these as important or very important). Collaboration, sharing vision and innovation also scored highly (74 percent, 71 percent and 54 percent). Knowledge of the recruitment sector was viewed as the least significant factor, with only 46 percent of respondents rating this attribute as important or very important.

The firms were also asked to score the effectiveness of their relationship with their top 20 percent of clients – on a scale of 1-100 percent, the average score was 80 percent. This contrasts strongly with how they rated their worst 20 percent where the average score was only 39 percent. Commenting on the findings, Ann Swain, Chief Executive of APSCo says, “As competition for professional talent continues to intensify, it is clear that clients will need to ensure that they are developing effective relationships with their external recruitment partners. Only those clients that are able to develop strong ties will be able to attract the very best skills. The findings from this survey will ultimately help recruitment firms to manage client expectations, and create new benchmarks to help prioritise who they should be conducting most of their business with!”