Recruitment FAQs for Employers

Better People is not a CV-sending service. We provide thoughtful, hands-on recruitment that helps growing businesses make better hiring decisions.

We take time to understand the role, your business, your team and what success will look like. We then assess candidates for their skills, experience, attitude and values – not simply how well they have written their CV.

Our aim is not to fill your vacancy as quickly as possible. It is to find someone who can do the job, contribute to your business and stay long enough to make a real difference.

Yes. Better People specialises in permanent recruitment for small and medium-sized businesses, particularly owner-managed and growing companies.

Recruiting for an SME is different from recruiting for a large organisation. One new employee can have an enormous effect on performance, culture and the rest of the team. There is also rarely a large HR department available to manage the process.

We provide the structure, market knowledge and recruitment expertise you need while keeping the service personal, practical and appropriate for your business.

Values-based recruitment assesses whether a candidate’s attitudes, behaviours and motivations align with the values and working environment of the business.

Skills and experience still matter, but they do not tell you how someone will behave when priorities change, pressure increases or nobody is watching. That is often where the difference between an acceptable hire and an exceptional one becomes clear.

We build your values into the recruitment process and use carefully designed questions to gather evidence of how candidates have behaved in real situations.

We assess business fit by understanding your culture, values, leadership style, working environment and expectations before we begin approaching candidates.

We also ask honest questions about the reality of the role. Is the business fast-moving? Is the job highly structured or does the person need to create order from chaos? Will they be given close direction or expected to work things out for themselves?

We then explore candidates’ experience, behaviours, motivations and preferred ways of working. ‘Fit’ does not mean finding people who are all the same – it means finding someone who can thrive in your particular business.

Yes. In fact, we believe role clarity is one of the most important parts of successful recruitment.

Before advertising or approaching candidates, we help you clarify why the role exists, what the person needs to achieve, which skills are essential and which can be developed. We can also help you distinguish between what the business genuinely needs and what has simply appeared on an old job description.

Getting this right improves the job advert, candidate search, interviews and eventual onboarding. It also prevents you from recruiting an impressive person for the wrong job.

Our recruitment process can include role planning, job description and advert development, targeted advertising, candidate search, initial screening, structured interviews, shortlisting and interview support.

We provide clients with more than a CV. Our candidate introductions include the relevant context from our assessment so you can understand why we believe someone should be considered.

Depending on the role and service agreed, we can also support assessment, candidate profiling, offer management, references, onboarding and probation. We remain involved throughout the process because recruitment does not end when a candidate says yes.

We use proactive candidate sourcing to identify and approach people who may not be searching job boards but could be open to the right opportunity.

This may include our networks, existing candidate relationships, targeted database searches, professional platforms, referrals and direct approaches to people with relevant experience.

Reaching passive candidates requires more than sending a generic message. We need to understand what makes your role genuinely attractive and explain it properly. That is why role clarity, employer reputation and a persuasive job proposition are so important.

The recruitment timescale depends on the role, location, salary, candidate availability and how quickly decisions can be made.

We will agree a realistic recruitment plan with you at the beginning and keep you informed throughout. If the market presents a challenge – perhaps the salary is uncompetitive or the candidate pool is unusually small – we will tell you rather than allow weeks to drift by.

We work with pace, but we will not send unsuitable CVs simply to create the appearance of progress. A rushed shortlist can become a very expensive shortcut.

Before introducing a candidate, we assess their relevant experience, capabilities, motivations, career expectations and reasons for considering the role.

We also explore the factors that are particularly important to your business, such as values, communication style, level of autonomy and experience of working in a similar environment.

We discuss the opportunity with the candidate and confirm their interest before sending their details. Our clients receive a considered introduction rather than an unexplained CV, helping them decide who should progress to interview.

We recruit permanent positions across a range of professional, commercial, operational and specialist functions.

Our experience includes leadership, operations, sales, business development, marketing, finance, administration, technical and professional appointments. We have recruited across sectors including construction, property, architecture, engineering, professional services, healthcare, manufacturing and creative businesses.

We do not claim that every vacancy is right for us. We first consider whether we understand the market and can add genuine value. If we are not the right recruiter for a role, we will say so.

Yes. We can help you create structured interview questions and scorecards based on the actual requirements of the role.

Rather than relying on instinct or asking every candidate a different set of questions, we help you collect consistent evidence about experience, capability, values and behaviour. This makes candidates easier to compare and reduces the risk of choosing the person who interviews most confidently rather than the person most likely to succeed.

We can also support second interviews, practical assessments and candidate profiling where these will improve the decision.

Yes. We stay in contact during the period between offer and start date and can support your onboarding and probation process.

This stage is easily overlooked, but candidates can feel uncertain, receive counteroffers or disengage if communication suddenly stops. A clear plan helps maintain their confidence and gives them a positive impression before their first day.

We also encourage regular check-ins during the early months. Good recruitment gets the right person through the door; good onboarding helps them become a successful, committed member of the team.

The applicable replacement or rebate arrangements will be set out clearly in the terms agreed before the recruitment begins.

However, our first priority is to reduce the likelihood of this happening. We do that through careful role planning, thorough candidate assessment, honest communication and continued contact after the offer.

If concerns emerge during the early months, it is often better to address them quickly rather than wait until the relationship has broken down. Where appropriate, we can help the employer and new employee identify what is going wrong and what may be needed to get things back on track.

Our recruitment fees depend on the role, level of search required and service agreed.

Typically, a one-off placement for a new client would be 18% of the salary being offered to the successful candidate. This reduces to 15% for any subsequent hires.

Before beginning a campaign, we will explain what is included and provide clear written terms so you understand the cost and any applicable replacement or rebate arrangements.

Price matters, but the cheapest recruitment option is not always the least expensive in the long run. An unsuitable appointment can cost an SME far more than the original recruitment fee through lost time, disruption, missed opportunities and the need to recruit all over again.

You should consider using a recruitment agency when the role is business-critical, difficult to fill or taking too much time away from running your business.

An agency can also help when you need access to candidates who are not actively applying, require a confidential search or want a more structured and objective selection process.

Recruiting directly can work well when you have the time, internal resources and candidate reach to manage it properly. If you are unsure which approach is appropriate, we will give you an honest view – even if that means telling you that you may not need us.

Yes. We regularly support businesses with specialist, senior and difficult-to-fill permanent vacancies.

We begin by identifying why the role has been difficult to recruit. The problem may be a limited talent pool, unclear expectations, an uncompetitive package, the location, the job title or the way the opportunity is being presented.

We can then recommend a targeted recruitment strategy based on evidence rather than simply reposting the same advert and hoping for a different result. Sometimes the answer is a broader search; sometimes the role itself needs to be reconsidered.

No. Better People is based near Wallingford in Oxfordshire, but we recruit for businesses and roles in other parts of the UK.

Our strongest networks are in Oxfordshire and the surrounding areas, including Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and the Thames Valley. However, the right search area depends on the role, required working pattern and availability of suitable candidates.

We can recruit for office-based, hybrid and remote positions, provided we believe we can reach the right market and represent the opportunity effectively.

The first step is a conversation about your business, the vacancy and what you need the new person to achieve.

We will ask about the reasons for recruiting, the challenges involved, your timescale and any previous attempts to fill the role. We can then recommend the most appropriate recruitment approach and explain the likely process, costs and next steps.

You do not need to arrive with a perfect job description. In many cases, helping you clarify the role is exactly where our work begins.