Here is a little-known fact for you: the world’s first ever recruitment company was formed in London in 1653. It was called the ‘Office of Addresses and Encounters’, which you would be forgiven for mistaking as a dating agency.
The need for businesses to externalise some (or all) of their recruitment has been commonplace for almost 400 years for a multitude of reasons – time, cost, contacts, the list goes on. So, when it comes to your next round of hiring, why should leaning on the support of a recruitment agency like ours be a serious consideration for your organisation?
Here are five of the most important ways an agency partner can ensure you generate the maximum return on your recruitment investment:
1. Recruiters have talent networks employers can only dream of
It is true – if you speak to enough people over a prolonged period of time you build up a phenomenal network of talent that is both ‘on’ the market and ‘in’ the market - open to new career opportunities.
Recruiters can leverage these extensive networks and dip into their own talent pools to find the candidates with the skills and experience that employers sorely need to plug the gaps in their organisations and enable them to remain competitive.
2. Recruiters give you back the most precious of all commodities - time
LinkedIn’s 2021 Workforce Report stated that the average time between a job offer being made and the successful candidate starting their new position is 49 days. What the report failed to mention is the time it took to get the offer stage in the first place.
Hiring managers don’t just look after the recruitment of people, this is only a part of their overall responsibility. Indeed, while ‘they’ say that looking for a job is a job in itself the same premise applies when it is flipped – finding a great candidate very much is a time-intensive process. Yet hiring managers need to balance this part of their role with everything else they must do. Recruiters can give hiring managers much of this time back.
3. Recruiters help you avoid costly mis-hires
According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the cost of a bad hire inti a non-managerial position can be anything up to £42,000. For senior roles, Oxford Economics puts this figure at £130,000 in wasted fees, training, and productivity. Not to mention the impact it has on the rest of the team who are left to take on the additional workload created by the departure of a wrong hire.
Few businesses can absorb such costs, especially in the current climate. This is where recruiters really do earn their stripes. They vet all prospective candidates for a role and only shortlist those with the greatest likelihood of being successful in the position. Put another way, they search and find the right people for the right role at the right time in a way that avoids costly mis-hires.
Recruitment agencies act as partners for hiring managers. They free up their time by undertaking the most demanding element of the search and selection process, which allows hiring managers to focus their energies on those other day-to-day and equally essential tasks.
4. Recruiters have invaluable market insight to inform better hiring decisions
It is rare for a company to only hire people for one specific type of role, such as finance, admin, or sales for example. They will likely recruit for a multitude of disciplines and each of those will be part of a whole other industry. Recruiters like White Horse have consultants who specialise in each of these areas and will have the experience and market insights both locally and regionally to better inform their clients’ recruitment strategies.
They will be able to help employers understand the availability of talent in each of these disciplines and the expectations of candidates (salary, conditions, benefits). This enables hiring managers to position their roles in a way that makes both the job and the organisation itself an attractive proposition to the people they want to attract to work for them.
5. Recruiters manage the negotiation process
There are few things as frustrating than having gone through the entire recruitment process and selecting your preferred candidate only to find that you are poles apart when it comes to the salary offer you have put on the table. But a deal can still be done, it just needs a little interjection. Cue: your recruitment partner.
Candidates feel uncomfortable talking money with a new employer primarily because they have done all they can to ‘sell’ themselves as the candidate of choice and the last thing they want is to be seen as being too focused on the proverbial dollar. Recruiters can act as intermediaries – they will advise you on whether your offer is in line with current market rates for your area, and equally advice the candidate if their expectations are realistic or not.
The need to outsource your recruitment function is a personal one, yet it can prove highly beneficial in terms of cost-effectiveness, time-management and to mitigate potential risks or bad decisions. If you are planning your next hire, we’re here to help you.