There are many benefits to partnering with a recruitment agency when searching for the perfect candidate. We work as a process partner to place brilliant candidates within great companies. Take a look below at just a few of the reasons choosing to work with The Recruitment Bar will be the best decision you make today.
Knowledge of the market
The best recruiters will have their finger on the pulse of their markets and can give their hiring team valuable insight into what is happening. They should know the available talent, where they are and how to reach out to them, salary rates, career expectations, available skill-sets and current hiring complexities. If other businesses are struggling to find the same people as you, they should be able to advise on alternative solutions. The best recruitment agencies will act as partners and collaborators, and should still be your eyes and ears in the market. The Recruitment Bar has been operating in Northamptonshire & Leicestershire since 2001, that’s a lot of years’ experience of the local market and knowledge of where to harbour that talent for your business.
Extended reach
Some candidates are hard to find. They may be passive or they may be selective. If they aren't responding to job advertisements, don't see themselves as part of your 'talent pool' or are too busy to search full time then the chances are that they may have relationships with trusted specialist recruiters in your area or sector. Even if they aren't currently active, there's a strong chance that a good recruiter will know who they are and how to reach them. Agencies have many networks - each consultant, candidate, client or collaborator has the potential to leverage their networks to help connect you to people with a range of skills and experiences, many of who would be off the radar of an in-house team or hiring manager.
Candidates, not applicants
A lot of talent attraction is aimed at attracting applicants, whether they are responding to an advert, applying on specification, or through your website. A lot of these people may not be good matches for the role hence a lot of time will be invested in filtering, assessing, matching and communicating with them. When we talk of a bad candidate experience it's normally an applicant experience that we are referring to. Time and resourcing recruitment teams will use CV databases the majority of the time to begin the matching process, they use keyword searches and source candidates by calling them and initially telephone interviewing these candidates, searches can be wide or narrow, either way this is what takes up the most of our time, matching the right talent for your business. Using a recruitment agency should mean that you see only candidates - job seekers who have been pre-selected to match all the criteria that you are looking for and who are worthy of consideration and interview.
Help with employer brand
Large companies invest a lot of time and money in developing and marketing their employer brand, but many SME and smaller businesses don't have the same resources. If you choose your agency wisely then they can give potential candidates a real insight into your business - what it's like to work there, benefits and career openings available, and a feel for the culture. If you partner closely with The Recruitment Bar, we spend time getting to know you and some of your key managers, and then we will be able to represent you as an employer of choice. If a candidate checks your business out on social media, either through a site like Glassdoor or by searching for people who used to work with you, then a fully briefed recruitment partner should be able to help clarify any points that may arise.
Access to key strategic skills
In the RECs most recent Jobs Outlook, the number one reason that companies gave for using a recruitment agency was to gain short term access to key strategic skills, a reason that been growing in importance over the last 3 years, now overtaking covering leave and peaks in demand. With talent shortages now potentially hindering growth it's not surprising that this is the case. Whilst some of the reasons I've already given may refer more to permanent recruiters, many also offer the opportunity to bring in qualified, experienced help at short notice. These flexible solutions are particularly crucial for a long term project or initiative.
Budget/Resource
Whilst a recent in-house recruiter survey did hint at a decrease in agency use, it also showed a tightening of budgets and resources. When I asked corporate recruiters on social media to give me reasons why they use agencies many answers were around time, budget and resource. There is a budget for agency fees, but not to gain extra resource. There are time constraints to performing a thorough search, so it is often easier for managers to interview from an agency shortlist - in fact, many hiring managers, themselves possibly placed by recruitment agencies in the past, often favour third party recruiters. There is little doubt that a hard-pressed HR or in-house team can benefit from the reach and networks of a trusted agency partner.
Of course, most businesses will have their own reasons for using recruitment agencies. For many, it's the temporary staffing service or the more recent managed workforce facility that many larger companies are favouring as a way to monitor staffing costs. For some, it may be a short-term need and for others, they may offer a major route to market and access the strong talent that they would otherwise miss out on.
Get in touch with the team today to see what The Recruitment Bar can do to help you find the best talent in the Midlands.