There are a lot of advantages of using a SAP Recruiter. Whether you already use a recruitment agency or are looking for one to represent you, make sure you ask the recruiter the following 5 questions to determine if they are worth your representation.
1. Are you specialised in SAP recruitment?
Lots of SAP recruiters will claim to be specialised in SAP but actually are not. As a SAP consultant or an aspiring consultant, I am sure you can appreciate the vast differences between a company that specialises in IT recruitment and who specialise in SAP recruitment. The most effective partnership with a recruiter will be with one that eats, breathes and sleeps SAP. These are the recruiters who know the marketplace and who will be able to accurately match you to roles in no time at all. Take a look at the company’s website to see if a good proportion of their job postings are directly SAP orientated – the more that are SAP related, the more specialised they are. Sometimes a particular recruiter will specialise in SAP even if the recruitment company covers a number of IT vendors. This leads me on to question 2.
2. How big is the SAP recruitment team?
If the recruiter is specifically working within the SAP marketplace, find out how many recruiters they have dedicated to SAP. Do they have separate teams for different roles in SAP, i.e. a contracts team and a permanent team. Typically, the more recruiters who work in the specialised SAP team, the more job opportunities they will have in that space of the market. 10 recruiters in that team will have a lot more UK SAP contract opportunities than a team that consists of 1 or 2 recruiters primarily due to the additional man power. Say you were you are looking for a contract role within the UK, you would want to find out if the recruiter is working alone or is in a team that specialise in SAP contract roles within the UK as any one of them could have a suitable role for you.
3. How many SAP CV’s do you present to your clients?
The underlying question here is ‘how likely am I to get the job once you are presenting me to the client?’ Some so called ‘specialist’ recruiters will send a client a large number of CV’s to consider. However, what a client really wants is a small number of candidates that are perfectly suited for the role and who want to work at their company. Hence why Whitehall Resources send the CV of 3 candidates who the specialist recruiter knows will fit the role and the culture with ease. In doing this, the hiring manager cuts down the time spent trawling through CV’s and can focus their attention on other tasks. You are looking for a specialist SAP recruiter that will represent you when they feel you have a very good chance of being selected by the hiring manager and not just because they are desperately trying to fill the role.
4. How good is your relationship with your clients?
A specialist SAP recruiter will have a number of clients that they work very closely with. Their relationship should be a personal and honest one. They will have met the hiring managers face to face on a number of occasions and will therefore be able to supply you with inside information of how the company operates and how you can transition yourself to fit into the organisation. I recommend querying the recruiter’s relationship with their client once you have a role in mind to give you an indication of how persuasive they can be when representing you. If they don’t know much about the company of interest, then they can’t represent you any better than any other recruiter trying to fill the position.
5. Which clients do you work with?
Roughly speaking, bigger client’s pay the best rates for SAP opportunities. Obviously there are exceptions but you should make sure that the SAP recruiter is working with some large multinational companies. Not only are the salaries normally a bit higher, but the client will return to that recruiter for each new SAP role they need to fill. Do not be put off too much if the recruiter is reluctant to disclose every client they work with as they have to respect confidential confinements set out by the client.
A question for you – Do you like a specialist SAP recruiter?
Most importantly, you want to find a specialist SAP recruiter that you actually like. You have to be confident that they are working in your interest. How pushy has the recruiter been? Are they genuinely interested in positioning specifically you, or are they just trying to fill a role? Keep regular contact with a recruiter for a short while and see what inclination you get.
Contact our SAP recruitment specialists at Whitehall Resources to discuss job opportunities or take a look at our SAP jobs.