Recruiting - Agencies or Direct?

These days there are many options open to companies trying to fill vacancies. Long gone are the days when your only choice was to run an advert in the local paper and/or engage a recruitment agency.

The internet changed everything of course, and it started with the rise of job boards. The ability for businesses to reach out to job-seeking candidates directly to avoid paying agency-placement fees had begun. Then with the advent of social media – particularly LinkedIn of course – many companies wondered if they’d ever have to pay an agency-placement fee again?

When the job board/aggregator Indeed first came to market they made their offering free of charge and so they quickly overtook Monster to become the biggest job board in the world. So now you could get your vacancy in front of millions of candidates - directly and at no cost. Brilliant! Who needed agencies?

Of course, the reality wasn’t that simple and, whilst utilising many direct resourcing methods is a good idea, there are many compelling reasons why the old ways are still often the best ways. Particularly when it comes to more specialist hires.

Firstly, Indeed’s success in making themselves the “go to” job board means that certain vacancies generated huge numbers of applications. A nice problem to have? That depends on the quality of the applicants. It’s very easy to apply to a job board advert – often it can be done with one-click – and so Hiring Managers and HR teams can find themselves with hundreds of CVs to go through. Sorting the wheat from the chaff is time-consuming. Hiring Managers and HR Managers have their own jobs to do - so going through hundreds of CVs to try to find the relevant ones might just have to wait.

Directly resourcing potentially suitable candidates through accessible CV databases, LinkedIn, and other social media sites can also be very time consuming. So much so, many companies employ in-house resourcing teams to do so.

But is this a case of “robbing Peter to pay Paul”? Do the annual salaries for your resourcing team outweigh the cost of paying agency-placement fees when you successfully hire?

…and what about hires that don’t work out?

It’s not just your resourcing team’s salaries that should be considered – how much does a bad hire cost your business? As a solution many agencies offer guarantee periods where, if a placement doesn't work out within a specified timeframe, they will find a replacement at no extra cost.

A good agency should present you with a shortlist of relevant interested candidates, saving you the time it takes to go through applications and often resulting in a quicker hire. In addition, a good specialist agency with a strong relevant database should also be able to identify a higher calibre of candidate by accessing a more passive audience alongside an active audience.

For roles that are less specialised, using in-house resources or direct recruitment methods may prove to be more practical and cost-effective, but engaging the right agency for more specialist or senior hires offers clear benefits over the “DIY approach”.

Of course, all this expertise and data is only of benefit if it can be drawn upon effectively. Agencies that partner with Recruitly can automate much of the resourcing work, organise their efforts effectively and run complex and unrivalled searches of their candidate databases - even utilising the latest AI to find candidates. This means they can act quickly and generate relevant quality candidates for your vacancies.

Of course, different approaches suit different companies and often a mixture of methods can give the best results. But if you do engage a recruitment agency then choosing one that partners with Recruitly is a good place to start.