7 things to remember before engaging with recruitment agencies

Filling job positions may be difficult to do if you’re juggling a lot of work at the same time. Especially now that the role of HR is growing, finding the right candidate while ensuring consistent quality in all areas would be challenging.

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That’s why it’s recommended to work with recruitment agencies. However, before anything else, there are a few things that you should know about such companies before collaborating with them. Read on to find out what they are!

What is a recruitment agency?

A recruiting agency is an external business that helps its clients fill job vacancies. They focus solely on this: to assist employers in sourcing and recommending top talents who match the organization’s needs.

Think of them as the “intermediary” between a company and a job seeker. Their main job is to connect the most suitable candidate to a role that the said organization is trying to fill. Once accepted, the candidate will now be an employee of the client.

There are many types of recruitment agencies such as:

1. Traditional Recruitment Agency
2. Headhunting Agency
3. Staffing Agency
4. Niche Recruiting Agency

You can read more about them in detail here, alongside steps on how to start your own.

What are the benefits of engaging with a recruitment agency?

There are plenty of reasons why people work with such agencies. Here are three main ones:

Helps you save time

You would be surprised by how significant the time-to-fill would be shortened if you work with recruiting agencies. Sourcing candidates is already laborious enough, not to mention having to screen, interview, and more, too!

Especially with all the responsibilities on your shoulders as HR, it can take a lot of your time. That is why working with such agencies is a good idea. They are dedicated to this alone, which makes them both efficient and effective.

While you do your daily work, they fill the position that your company needs. They take care of the hiring process so you don’t have to worry about it, including posting job ads, advertising them, screening CVs, gathering and interviewing the talent pool, etc.

They lead you to the best fit

Apart from their recruiting dedication, their accrued experience in the field lands you the best fit possible.

This is their specialty. Plus, they know the market well. They are aware of what candidates want and what characteristics a good candidate should have. These lead them to top talents that your company might benefit from.

Additionally, they have extended reach as they have the connections and a huge database to back up their hiring efforts. If anything, this industry expertise will have a high chance of landing you a purple squirrel.

As key players in the HR sphere, they also can be good experts to ask for advice when you’re caught in a conundrum. They will be able to give you sound solutions that will impact your business positively the most.

Reduces costs

Of course, businesses should be concerned about numbers, too. There should be an increasing growth in sales and a declining slope in expenses.

Thankfully, you will be able to reduce costs by working with recruitment agencies. By picking the right candidate, you can avoid bad hires. That will be costly if you’re not careful. As said by this research, it can cost you up to 30% of the employee’s first-year salary!

That would be a huge bullet to dodge! As if that’s not beneficial enough, you would be able to save expenses on the following, too:

• Job advertisements
• Overtime costs
• Training costs
• … and more!

As you can see, the negative numbers would go down and sales would go up instead due to the ROI you would get.

The advantages are very evident. To that end, the following tips would be crucial to remember if you plan on reaching out to a recruiter agency.

7 Things to Remember Before Engaging with Recruitment Agencies

1. In-house recruiter vs agency recruiter

First and foremost, you have to consider if you need external help. Strategize with your team if your in-house recruiters or HR team can fill positions with top talents themselves without compromising the quality of their other responsibilities.

Can they balance their time excellently? Can they manage other tasks at the same time? These are what you should be asking them first because it’s better to be sure. Otherwise, you will risk more expenses like bad hire, long time-to-fill, and more.

You know your company well and, if you believe it would help your business in terms of numbers, then work with a recruitment agency. The chances of them finding you the best candidate available would be very high, and they can do this in a short period.

Your HR department will be productive on their respective endeavors, and you’ll have the vacant position filled on the other hand. It’s a win-win situation if you think about it carefully!

2. Specialized vs general

There are pros and cons to working with a specialized recruitment agency. Let’s start with the positive ones.

Those with niche recruitment specialties know their market down to the nitty-gritty. They have accrued experience working with a certain industry that they are aware of what such professionals look for in a job. They can communicate and negotiate well with them enough to convince them to join your company.

This will result in a faster hiring process. Additionally, you’ll be certain that there would be less training cost involved!

Now, what if you need to hire someone from a different industry? This is where general recruiter agencies come in. Having such a wide range of services, they can help you fill job vacancies in whatever field it might be.

The time-to-fill might be longer, but you can take advantage of the fact that they have more connections from all over. That means you can work with them again and again without worries.

This is good because you can develop a professional relationship that can hasten the operations. How? The company knows what to expect and the agency knows what kind of candidates the client prefers in terms of values, work ethics, etc.

That is the power of an established partnership, which can be more and more successful as time goes by.

3. Be secured legally

You never want to run into a legal issue. That is why you have to ensure that the recruitment agency that you will work for is protected against these kinds of concerns.

When you talk to them, mention this and listen to how they protect your data and, of course, the job seekers. You can also ask if they use recruiting tools that aid in this regard.

Manatal is one example. Our recruiter software has tools that help talent acquisition professionals in information security and data compliance with local and international regulations like the GDPR, CCPA, PDPA, and others.

How does this help?

• Automate data processing consent gathering from candidates via emails
• Modify and track candidate consent status directly from a candidate’s profile
• Check the consent status of your whole candidate pool
• Modify, extract and permanently delete data when requested by candidates
• Share your organization’s privacy policy and compliance terms on your career page
• Gather data processing consent when candidates apply on your career page
• Out-of-the-box compliance reports and analytics
• Top-tier encryption and daily back-ups of system databases
• … and many more!

This is a solution that your recruitment agency must be able to provide.

4. Most recruitment agencies do not charge until they find the perfect candidate

This might be a no-brainer. However, if you haven’t experienced working with recruiting agencies yet, you must know that most of them will only charge once a candidate is successfully onboarded.

No expense will be wasted because you will only get charged by the firm when you hire the talent. This is important to remember since you will have the peace of mind that they will do their best to ensure this happens.

This means you’ll get only the best of the best. Or else, their efforts will be in vain, right?

If you think that the rate they charge is costly, look at the bigger picture. This skilled individual is now a part of your team and will be able to make a difference to your organization. The ROI, undoubtedly, will outweigh the cost you paid.

Don’t be intimidated by the recruiting fee because it will all be worth it in the long run.

5. You should also do your due diligence to screen the recommended talent

In continuation to the point above, you should do your due diligence in screening the talent that the agency recommended.

He/she might be the best in their perspective, but you know your company better. Will this person match the company culture? Will this person thrive in the work environment that you have? Will this person get along well with the other employees?

You can also utilize our software to help you make better decisions. Our AI candidate recommendation engine reveals top talents and scores them based on job match (skills, experience, educational background, etc.).

What’s more, you can bolster their profile through our social media enrichment tool. Manatal checks the accounts of the candidate and registers relevant data that allows you to get to know them better beyond their resumes.

This adds credibility to the applicant, which can improve their score. These are extra steps you can take to ensure quality hires through and through.

6. Some may be unsuccessful

This might be controversial to hear, but it’s true. Some recruitment agencies may be unsuccessful in landing you top talents.

First, it may not be because they lacked the effort or resources to do so. Instead, some factors came into play that affected the results. This can be wrong timing, out of client budget, or relocation issues due to external causes (i.e. borders closing because of pandemic lockdowns).

Second, it might be because of the following reasons:

• Failing to negotiate convincingly with the candidate
• Failing to modernize their hiring approach (i.e. using recruitment software, integrating AI, etc.)
• Failing to improve employer branding (i.e. not active on social media)

Before you consider working with them, think about these. You might notice that they, do in fact, have a poor online presence or they don’t use any software at all. These can be indicators that can lead to unsuccessful hiring.

These firms will be the “medium” to your hiring needs, so it’s best that you partner with reliable and capable ones.

7. Take advantage of the time saved and cost saved

Lastly, don’t be too complacent just because you’re now working with a recruitment agency. It doesn’t mean that you’ll leave everything entirely up to them.

With the time and cost that you’ll save, you can use it to maximize your efforts. Strategize well with your HR team on what they can do to be fully productive.

You can assign some to be in charge of the extra screening process. You can make your assessment tests for the agencies to use. We wrote about integrating candidate assessments into your recruiting processes here for in-depth details.

Of course, you can also just do your best in other HR responsibilities. You can dedicate time to cultivate a healthy company culture, listen to the needs of employees and hiring managers, take more time to analyze reports and data, and among other things.

There is much to do and every second count if you truly want to be productive. Think steps ahead and not just one by one.

In Conclusion

Remember these 7 things before engaging with a recruiting agency. Put your trust in the right company, ensure that they use modern approaches, and do your best in instilling a mutually beneficial relationship.

Once you do, not only will you be able to save time and money, but you will also recruit the right people that can move your company forward to success.

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