If you are a recruiter in San Francisco, then the only way that you can still afford to pay $3 a gallon these days to fill up your gas tank, is if you start increasing your placement rate. That’s easier said than done, because you have a growing talent pool (the unfortunately unemployed), and a slow-recovering job market, where other recruiters are fighting to fill the same position. At a time like this some recruiters become extremely creative, which helps them stand out from the crowd.

There are several ways to be creative, our research at HireLabs suggests that if you improve the quality of applicants that you send for the interview, then you increase the placement potential as well as attain a certain level of respect in the eyes of the hiring manager.

Since HireLabs is in the business of creating customized assessments, we tried to see if the assessment industry could lend a hand to recruiters. We asked our research team to conduct a small experiment:

We selected a company in pharmaceuticals and asked them to provide us the names of three of their preferred recruiters (let’s call them Recruiters A, B, and C). Then we  developed a customized pre-employment test, taking into consideration the JD for the position of Plant Operations Manager, and gave the this test to Recruiter A’s candidates.

Recruiter A selected 2 candidates who passed the test, and presented them to the company for an interview. Recruiter B and C passed on 3 candidates each (untested) to the hiring manager. After several interview rounds, there are 3 candidates that have made it to the final round, and it was not surprising to learn that 2 of the 3 have been presented by Recruiter A. We will know by the end of February as to who got the job.

Although this was a minor experiment (and cannot validate any claim), it does act as a litmus test alluding to a direct correlation between quality of candidates and increased placements.

So if you are a recruiter, then start looking into tools that will assist you in presenting an improved quality of candidates, and then hopefully the pinch at the pump won’t hurt as much.