Things to know if you're considering using a Recruiter

Recruiters…

We’ve all heard of them.  A lot of us have used them or have been recruited by them.  

And, if you’re a hiring manager with an open position you’re currently struggling to hire for, you may even be toying with the idea of using a recruiter right now. 

Before you turn to recruiters, here are a few things you should consider…

What is a Recruiter?

For those who are unfamiliar with Recruiters, let’s first talk about who they are and what they do.

Recruiters work for an agency and help companies find talent for their open jobs.  They reach out to job seekers that they find on various platforms and then act as a go-between for the applicant and the company that is hiring.

While it’s true that using a recruiter can speed up your hiring process, there are some pretty significant downsides that may make it not worth spending extra money on them.

Recruiters cost money! Generally, recruiters will charge the company a percentage of the new employee’s pay.  Typically that percentage is 20-30%...but for a harder-to-fill role, they may even charge more.

 

You can’t build a talent pool. Often when companies do all their hiring in-house, they save the resumes and applications of the job seekers so they may contact them in the future if another job opens up.  When using a recruiter, you don’t get all those names and applications…you have no talent pool built up for down the road.  So every time you have a job opening, you are starting from scratch.

 

Lack of communication! One complaint I often hear from our clients who have used a recruiter is that they are terrible at communicating. Candidates will apply for jobs and never hear back.  Or sometimes the recruiter is in such a hurry to fill the role, they don’t listen to what the candidate is looking for in terms of salary and goals.  Now, it wouldn’t be fair to assume ALL recruiters are bad at communicating, but the truth is, recruiters have no personal ties to your company and can come across as pretty impersonal. This can make the applicant feel unwanted or unappreciated. This can also be very frustrating to both the job seekers and the hiring managers looking to fill their jobs.

 

No cultural fit. While a recruiter may be good at finding you a candidate that fits your needs on paper, they don’t know the company culture.  They can’t tell if this person will fit in with your other employees.  They don’t know if they will uphold your core values.  There is a lot more to qualifying a person for a job than just their education and experience.

 

Quality of new hires…or lack thereof… Recruiters have quotas to fill.  They are sometimes motivated by profits instead of the desire to find a good fit for both the candidate and the hiring company.  They may start recruiting anyone and everyone that they can find out there, whether they’re qualified and the right person for the job or not.  Which honestly, can end up as a disaster for everyone involved.

 

So what does this mean for your hiring?

 

Before you consider hiring a recruiter… know that there are other options to find and hire the right talent for your open positions! 

 

At ApplicantPro, we have a Recruitment Marketing Team that acts as an extension of your hiring team…we refer to this as a “Done With You” strategy. 

 

Using a Recruitment Marketing team means you’ll have a knowledgeable strategist examining your hiring process and determining the right path forward.  We will work with your hiring team to develop a unique strategy designed specifically for your company’s needs. We will build a system for you that will be effective long-term to keep applicant traffic flowing into your funnel. We can even use your current ATS if you’d like! We will continue to monitor your success and will make changes as necessary to help your hiring be as effective as possible.

 

What are the benefits of using a Recruitment Marketing team?

 

The best part of all of this? All of those downsides to using a recruiter that I mentioned above become a moot point…

 

You won’t have recruiters keeping a large percentage of your hires’ salary as their payment. All the applications you receive are yours to keep forever…helping you build up that talent pipeline for future hiring needs. You will be the one communicating with your applicants, ensuring they are up to speed every step of the way.  You are also the one screening and interviewing the job seekers to know if they’ll be a good fit for your company or not…this will also take care of the last issue…lack of quality of hires.  You’ll be screening and interviewing them and not just rushing to fill quotas, ensuring the best quality candidates for your open jobs.

 

If you’d like to learn a little more about how our Recruitment Marketing Team can help find you the talent you’re looking for, click the button below to set that up!

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