Why should companies use recruitment agencies?
For many years the term ‘recruitment agency’ has been dirty words for hiring managers, but recently there has been a wind of change. Many businesses are now turning to recruitment agencies, with a move towards ‘partner’ relationships between employer and agency.
So why the shift? Some of the main reasons why organisations are now developing closer relationships with recruitment agencies are:
1. Access the best
If you use a recruitment agency you're statistically more likely to access the best job-seekers on the market (both active and passive). People who are actively looking for new positions are more likely to register with agencies. In addition, most recruitment agencies will position their vacancy adverts on a range of job boards, and they should understand what it takes for that advert to rank highly in candidates' job searches. All of this is knowledge that you only get from working in the sector.
2. Specificity
Sometimes, your requirements might be very specific. They might be so tight, that you need an expert who understands the candidates in your niche and has a database of them to call upon. In this instance, using a recruitment agency means that only candidates who are fully qualified for the role will be shortlisted for the position. A recruitment agency will manage the process for you, rejecting any unsuitable candidates and managing any queries about the role, which leads to point 3:
3. Time saver
Using a recruitment agency will reduce the time and in-house resource that you need to dedicate to recruitment. It should also lead to a quicker turnaround on filling the vacancies, which in turn leads to increased efficiency of the organisation
4. Additional services
Recruitment agencies normally offer a range of specialist services such as psychometric tests, to help give you an unique insight into your future hires. Sourcing these tests independently can be time consuming and expensive as they can be part of the agencies' service offering.
5. Sector expertise
Recruitment consultants are experts at screening, filtering and profiling candidates. Your in-house team might not have the same level of expertise. Again this leads to time and cost efficiencies in the long run.
6. Seasonal demand
Another great reason to use a recruitment agency might be to give you flexibility in your recruitment planning to meet cyclical/market demand e.g. holiday cover in busy times such as Christmas. Temporary recruitment agencies will take a huge amount of the pain and stress away from companies who need quick access to temporary candidates.
7. Access to national job boards
A recruitment agency will improve the efficiency of a company's recruitment process through direct access to national job boards. Negotiating your own job board contracts can be costly and time consuming, and print media is nearly all but dead for job searching purposes, so utilising the right agency's access to job boards will put you in front of the best candidates on the market.
8. Shortlisting the best
Recruitment agencies will ordinarily only shortlist the correctly qualified personnel, meaning that you don't have to. Again a huge time saver.
9. Expert sector knowledge
If as a hiring manager you need to get expert opinion about and knowledge of current recruitment legislation, you could make the recruitment agency your first ‘port-of-call’. The agency should know all the relevant requirements and legalities surrounding the industry they're in.
10. Salary benchmarking
If you've got a role and you're unsure what the correct salary is for the position, the recruitment agency is ideally placed to give you an accurate market rate using salary data and local market knowledge.
