Laurence Lewis, President of YPI CREW explores the benefits of using a single recruiter

The mechanism of recruitment is at times misunderstood and can become messy when too many players are involved. This, of course, is not ideal and can create headaches for the client, so the aim is to make the recruitment process as smooth running as possible.

The challenge that the captains and senior yacht crew face is to build united, high-performing crews able to deliver the ultimate guest experience aboard their yachts.

The secret to achieving that over and over again is for a yacht to give exclusivity to one recruitment agency. Why is that so?

Engaging multiple yacht crew recruitment agencies for the same job will not only be incredibly time-consuming and frustrating but can also be very costly. Working exclusively with one agency on the other hand, means the chosen recruiter will get to know you and your needs well over time, resulting in faster searches and a more suitable selection of  candidates

Remember, the goal is to hire the right candidate quickly so you want to minimise the amount of administration and correspondence that will inevitably happen if you work with multiple agencies at one time.

Your recruiter needs to be your partner in the recruitment process

Serious recruiters concentrate their efforts and dedicate their time to clients who they are working within partnership and who show commitment. In recruitment it takes two to tango and recruiters will absolutely work harder for clients who use them exclusively or who will perhaps only put them in competition with one other agency. It is a total fallacy to believe that recruiters will work harder when they are in competition.

Think of your recruiter as that trusted middle person whose role is to advice both parties and navigate towards a common ground and positive resolution, managing expectations because, most of the time …. recruiters know best – of course we do, it’s our job, we spend our days talking to crew, to clients, to the market.

Clients might think that they get a better selection of candidates when they enlist various crew recruitment agencies but mostly they won’t as they just create a race, resulting in them getting loads of inappropriate and duplicated CVs of candidates.

Clients will spend their precious time reading these CVs, contacting candidates to find out it’s all a big waste of time. On the other hand, one well-connected recruiter working exclusively on a job will absolutely want to find the best solution and will do a thorough job to source a few suitable, interested and available candidates and might even have time to headhunt. This recruiter will have the incentive to build an effective shortlist of candidates deserving of an interview.

This is why it’s so important to make your recruiter your partner, a person who you can trust to know exactly what you need and is able to deliver quickly whenever the need for new crew arises.

What can you expect from your recruiter?

The responsibility to find the right candidate lies entirely on your recruiter and for them to be able to do that, it’s important to brief them efficiently.

Getting off to a good start will often involve writing down a good job description, a concise summary of the role. If this is your first time working with a particular agency, this should also include some insights into the specifics of your yacht, the culture and value onboard.

Once done, the job description will become a valuable and reusable tool only requiring minor updating from one season to the next.  Recruiters love professional job descriptions and will use them to truly champion your jobs with candidates.

Your recruiter will discuss your expectations and how they fit with the market. Will it be a struggle to fill the job because of an unrealistic salary in a candidate-short market? Is your leave package competitive enough? Are you asking too much in terms of skills when perhaps onboard training can be a solution? 

Recruiters know unicorns don’t exist and will be transparent about that with the client. What is necessary is to build a strong team on board, so looking at individual strengths and evaluating what the new crew member will deliver to an already successful team, will be vital.

Working exclusively with one recruiter will shift the responsibility for success to that recruiter. If the job is given to one recruiter, we own the problem. The client can focus on his own workload and outsource finding the right talent to the experts. After all, that is what yacht crew agencies are for.

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