Trust: A Delicate Plant

Trust is a basic prerequisite for successful relationships. This is not only true personally but also professionally in recruitment.

• Three experts from Iventa share about the core nature of their work: trust.

“Trust is a delicate plant; if it is destroyed, it won’t come back soon,” the first German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once said in a speech to the Prussian House of Lords in 1873. This makes it all the more important for both sides to nurture and cultivate it.

“Trust works according to the principle of cause and effect,” Hannes Gsellmann, Managing Director and Director of Iventa HR Consulting Vienna, asserts: “You can always start building trust yourself, and you get it back in return.”

In recruitment, trust is not just one value among many; it is hard currency. This applies in several ways: the more trusting the collaboration with clients and the better you know each other, the more successful you will be in finding them the most suitable employees. Candidates must also trust the recruiter to handle with care all of the sensitive information they disclose during the selection process.

Finally, the collaboration between the recruiter and the client also determines whether candidates will place their trust in a potential employer.

• The Foundation of Building Trust: Appreciation

But how do you gain trust in the first place? For Isabella Pachinger-Döberl, Director of Recruitment Consultancy at Iventa in Linz, Austria, authenticity and open communication are key: “Trust is created through a basic understanding of each other, and mutual appreciation. Discretion and reliability are essential for trust to grow over time.”

Intensive dialogue with clients is particularly important. Hannes Gsellmann echoes this sentiment: “I’m skeptical when companies just send a terse email looking for a candidate but don’t want to take the time for a face-to-face meeting.” A personal meeting is essential to establish a common basis and get to know each other before getting down to work. Even professionals find it difficult to judge whether someone is a good fit for the company if the exchange has only been superficial.

It’s no surprise that candidates can also sense how sustainable the relationship is between hiring clients and consultants. The more extensive the dialogue between the client and the recruiting firm, the more detailed the picture the consultant can paint of the company. This, in turn, is necessary to ensure that the most suitable person ultimately decides to move to a new employer.

“As recruitment consultants, it is also our job to be able to provide candidates with all the relevant information to enable them to make a decision,” says Hannes Gsellmann.

• Partnering Eye to Eye

Sometimes it is also necessary to remind companies that executive search consultants are much more than just suppliers of CVs. “Seeing the situation eye to eye with our client, we find the best possible match for them, but to do so, they also have to open up to us. The more involved we are and the better we know each other, the easier it is to find the right person,” says Sandra Zach-Rabl, Director of Recruitment Consultancy at Iventa Graz.

Open and transparent communication with both candidates and hiring clients during the process is key to building trust and can lead to successful relationships on both sides.

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