The choice of who should lead your talent hunt can be a head-scratcher, especially if you must choose between agency recruiters with extensive talent networks and corporates with immense insider expertise. While agencies have access to a vast talent pool, they can be expensive since they rely on commissions. Internal recruiters intimately understand your company, but they might lack professional networks. Since every recruitment process is unique, this article will explore critical factors you can consider when deciding on an ideal hiring option.
1. Consider Your Level of Urgency
If you urgently need to fill a job post, agency recruiters can be invaluable in helping you find the right fit quickly. Since they specialize in screening and selecting qualified personnel, their extensive networks of active and passive experts make them more likely to find ideal candidates quickly. They also have undivided attention, unlike corporate recruiters. Therefore, they have more time to find your ideal candidates.
2. What’s the Number of Vacant Positions?
Corporate recruiters typically work in-house, meaning their roles and networks are limited to the organization. Agencies, on the other hand, have a wider reach since they work with multiple businesses and professionals. Working with several brands and individuals means external recruiters maintain an extensive job seekers database spanning past and present prospects. They can help you fill multiple job positions promptly as opposed to internal recruiters who work in-house and often have limited access to talent pools.
3. Consider Your Hiring Frequency
If your brand only hires occasionally, it’s cheaper to get an agency to help you than to maintain an in-house team. Corporate recruiters earn a monthly salary, and if you hire infrequently, much of your resources will be wasted investing in a team whose services you’ll rarely require. However, agency recruiters work on an as-need-arise basis, which means you only pay for services delivered.
4. Assess Your Staff’s Current Workload
Hiring is a lengthy process that involves time-consuming tasks like sourcing, screening, and interviewing. If your staff is already stretched thin, consider agency headhunters. Besides their extensive talent networks, external recruiters are fully immersed in the process and can do the job without distractions. If you’re pressed for time, use Leadar to find agency recruiters near you. This platform is ideal for sourcing professional and business contacts by job title, skills, or location.
5. Weigh the Cost of Additional Responsibilities
Before they can hire, recruiters verify candidates’ details, check their work experience, and conduct assessments. While both sides carry out these duties, in-house teams are more cost-effective since they handle other post-recruitment administrative tasks. After hiring, they often ensure the person settles in comfortably, and their employment benefits are set up accordingly. Agency recruiters often lose touch with the candidates after recommending the right fit. Hence, they only handle the initial phases of the hiring process, and for more help, you’d need to pay extra fees.
6. Consider Your Immediate Hiring Needs
Internal recruiters know all about your hiring process and what your company needs. With such an insider perspective, they can effectively analyze hiring metrics, such as time-to-fill, candidate quality, and cost per hire, and identify areas for improvement. While external recruiters might find great candidates, they lack the exposure to your organization to assess the effectiveness of their hires. This lack of specific data makes it hard for your company to figure out if the hiring is done right.
7. Prioritize What Aligns with Your Culture
Employers want culturally fit employees since they assimilate with the rest of the team quickly, stay longer, and are more productive. If this is what really matters to you, then consider using corporate recruiters. Since they’re typically employees of your organization, they have a good grasp of your work environment and unspoken codes of conduct. External recruiters, on the other hand, would need to rely on second-hand information from websites or industry reputations. The lack of first-hand experience limits their ability to discern accurately whether a recruit is a good fit for you or not.
8. Assess the Likelihood of an Objective Assessment
Human behavior is marred by bias, which sometimes creeps in recruitment. Objectivity, therefore, helps eliminate discrimination due to human weaknesses. Additionally, objective assessment improves the candidate’s suitability for the role and performance. Again, most hiring decisions are based on an emotional assessment of a candidate’s suitability for a role rather than demonstrable competencies.
Agencies offer recruitment as a service and invest a lot to improve their processes, such as developing tools for distinct roles. Hence, they are more likely to offer an objective assessment than corporates.
9. Integration of Specialized Recruitment Tools
Online recruitment tools are a game-changer. They leverage technology to automate part or the entire recruitment process. Incorporating one way video interview software into the recruitment process is another technological innovation that can significantly streamline candidate screening, allowing recruiters to efficiently assess a large number of applicants while maintaining a personal touch. If you fancy technology in your organization and automating your processes, including human resource management, corporate recruiters are the way to go. As part of your personnel, an in-house team will help create long-lasting systems that can be used even in the future. While agency recruiters may also have some of these tools, you don’t own them, nor can you keep any part of the systems.
10. Evaluate Brand Representation
Brand image and reputation affect the quality of staff your organization attracts. You want to hire motivated employees who will take pride in joining your team. Internal recruiters make great brand ambassadors since they know first-hand how it feels to work in this environment. Once they find a suitable match, they can easily convince the candidate to take the job using tangible benefits. However, it’s challenging for an agency to paint an authentic picture of your culture and working conditions.
Conclusion
Internal and external recruiters bring different strategies to recruitment. Selecting whether to go for the former or the latter demands that you have a holistic approach to talent acquisition. While many people would choose one or the other, it’s also possible to use both in unique situations. This piece highlights what to look out for when deciding which way to go, agency or corporate recruitment.
