Finding talented individuals to fill crucial roles in your organization can be challenging. Whether you lack the time necessary for conducting the search and the interviews, or whether you don’t know where to find the best candidates, using a recruiting agency may be the solution for your sourcing needs. Recruiting agencies are third-party firms that find, recruit and screen individuals before referring the top candidates to the employer.
Types of Third-Party Recruiting Firms
If you are considering outsourcing your employee recruitment efforts, there are different types of recruiting firms you can choose from.
Recruiting agencies, or executive search firms, typically work to match qualified job candidates with permanent, full-time positions, often for higher-level roles in a company. Some recruiting agencies specialize in various fields, which gives you access to the best potential employees in your industry.
A staffing firm or agency generally focuses on filling short-term or temporary-to-permanent employee needs, and these agencies are typically focused on finding jobs for candidates, rather than finding the right candidate for a specific job.
Recruiting Agencies Offer Specialized Services
Recruiters at recruitment agencies are experts at finding people for open job positions. In addition to doing the work of actually searching for potential candidates, they can help you accomplish the following:
- Define your personnel needs, for both open positions and underperforming positions
- Assist you in developing accurate job descriptions
- Help you develop a compensation package that will be most effective in attracting top candidates
A recruiting agency that is focused on filling top-level positions will typically source from passive and currently employed individuals in your industry. This means that instead of having applications come to them, they search for and recruit skilled individuals who are not necessarily looking for a new position but may be persuaded to accept an opportunity with your company. Most in-house HR employees will not have access to these passive candidates or the time to search for them.
Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Recruitment
If you have an important position that needs to be filled, working with a recruitment agency may be the right decision. A recruiting agency has the resources and skills to find the people you need, as well as the time to devote to the search so as not to settle for someone who only meets half the criteria. Benefits of using a recruitment agency include the following:
- Sourcing experts who know where to look for top candidates
- The ability to preserve your company’s anonymity in the candidate-search process, if desired
- An objective analysis of your company’s needs for the role
- A more neutral way to approach currently employed candidates, especially if employed by competitors
A recruiter’s job is to not only find good candidates, but to follow up on references and ensure that the individual has the necessary qualifications for the job position. Using a recruiting agency can be a great asset when filling openings in your company, especially for high-level roles.
However, a recruiting agency may not be the best option for all companies.
- When you hire a recruiting agency, you are trusting them with insider information, which can make your company vulnerable to having confidential information divulged to the wrong person.
- You will need to find room in the budget for a recruiting agency. Fees can be assessed in different ways: two common methods are paying the agency a percentage of the candidate’s salary amount or paying the agency a fixed fee that is paid in several installments during the recruiting and hiring process.
It is important to weigh the time commitment, cost and resources available with an in-house HR search versus the value of paying for a third-party recruiting agency.
Check out this article for a more in-depth look into the process of choosing a recruiting agency.
