Why should you use a recruitment company in a 'tightening' market?

This post is an unashamed plug for why it makes sense to use a recruitment agency to support your business in meeting its staffing needs.

If you are not interested in this area, you can stop reading now and scroll on to something else that might pique your curiosity.

Quickly delving into why it’s a tightening market – The Age reported recently that businesses declaring insolvency in Victoria leapt to 2372 in 2023, which was 29% higher than the previous year. Queensland and NSW were both higher, being 45% and 48.3% respectively.

The Age reported “A survey of company bosses by the Australian Industry Group found optimism about the outlook for the year is now at the lowest ebb since the mining boom ended more than a decade ago, with many warning of rising costs pressures and anaemic demand.” The Ai Group has been “banging the drum” that rising wages must go hand-in-hand with increased productivity for several years.

If you have an internal Talent Acquisition team who meet 100% of your recruitment needs, and you’re happy with their performance, you can stop reading now.

I’ve quoted this statistic before – IBISWorld states that as at the end of June 2023, there were 8784 recruitment agencies operating in Australia, with well over 200,000 employees in this sector. Whilst no two agencies provide exactly the same quality of service (and it might even be a different service, or at least variations on the elements of the service), nor any two individuals go about the delivery of the service in exactly the same way, the investment made by organisations with the recruitment sector was north of $17 Billion in Australia. The Australian Dentistry market was around two thirds of this, at about $12 Billion.

Dentistry? Why am I comparing Dentistry with Recruitment? Go with me here for a minute.

You visit the dentist because you either want to maintain the health of your teeth and gums, or you have pain. You use the recruiter because you want to maintain the health of your casual workforce (people leave casual jobs for a whole host of reasons), or you have a pain – someone in a crucial role has left.

In the latter example of both scenarios, you have a hole. You need a filling. You can use your internal Dentist/Talent Acquisition to perform this service professionally, or you can try filling it yourself.

If you have some skills, knowledge and a sense of adventure you can have a crack at filling it yourself. In both cases, there is a risk of the filling not lasting, and falling out. Out of your tooth, or out of your organization.

Sure, you’re thinking the risk is not equal between these examples. The likelihood of the filling falling out of your tooth is much much higher, than a new employee falling out of your organization. But what of the consequence?

The consequence of a filling falling out of your tooth has little or no impact on your other teeth. But an employee falling out? Well, you’ve lost a lot more than the cost of a trip to the dentist. You’ve spent time (your time!) investing in this new person. Inducting them, onboarding them (yes, these two things are different!), including introducing them to other parts of the organization and perhaps even suppliers or customers. And when this person falls out of your organization, it has an impact on the people remaining – which can be negative. And then are you going to replace them? Well, you’ve got to start the exercise again. And its not free, it is an investment of your time (again). Oh, so don’t replace them? What does that signal to the rest of the workforce?

In a tightening market, where your people are the ones making a difference to the performance of your business, why would you take a risk of making a bad hire?

Not convinced? Sure, I haven’t gone through what a recruiter does. They do more than “bung up an ad on Seek and share it on their socials”. Way more. I wouldn’t be able to do it justice by writing about it here. Pick up the phone and talk to a recruiter. Invite them in for a coffee and a chat. It will only cost you half an hour of your time, and trust me, it’s worth the investment.

Hey, recruiters out there - Let me know if you’ve ever been compared to a Dentist before! Or drop me a comment with an anecdote of what other industry you have been compared to, and why it made you laugh.