Recruitment services: how to choose the best fit for your business

Growing and thriving business means growing demand for qualified talent and…overwhelmed internal recruitment teams. In fact, when asked about their biggest challenges, 75% of HR leaders report their managers are overwhelmed by the growth of their job responsibilities.

As a result, businesses sooner or later come to a decision to resort to recruitment agencies. We won't hide it: it's easy to get lost in the sea of options, services, and cooperation formats. Besides, if you're considering external recruiting solutions for the first time, you need to factor in different recruitment types, costs, team culture, and more. 

In this post, we'll guide you through key aspects of choosing external recruitment services, their types, and tasks you can delegate. Tune in!

Typical recruitment consultant tasks: how to get the most of your cooperation

Working with external recruiting teams, many businesses discover that actual recruitment is just the tip of an iceberg. You can get much more by working with external professionals:

• Audit of your current recruitment workflows to detect your current bottlenecks and suggest improvements.
• Candidate sourcing to expand your talent pool and find professionals with rare skill sets.
• Candidate background checks and references 
• Employer branding services to build a recognizable image and resonate with your potential employees.

What to consider before cooperating with a recruitment agency

We obviously support the idea of hiring recruiting agencies. However, that doesn't mean they're the magic bullet to your recruiting problems. The reason is simple: if you want your cooperation to be as productive as possible, evaluate your current situation and determine what tasks you can delegate to an agency.

Here are the factors for you to consider:

• Your objectives. For example, you may need extra hands for mass recruitment, get an outside perspective on your existing recruiting flow, or improve your sourcing strategy.
• Availability of key stakeholders to be involved with recruiting (to onboard a recruiting agency, keep consistent communication, manage recruitment workflow, etc)
• Recruiting resources you already have (experienced recruiters, candidates pool, recruitment analytics, etc).
• Cultural fit. A recruiting agency must be aware of your company culture and translate your values to potential candidates.
• Hiring timeline. Clearly define a timeframe for finding a candidate, so you can rely on an agency to fulfill your recruitment needs efficiently and avoid any mismatched expectations.
• Cost of recruitment. Different agencies have different fee structures, like a percentage of the candidate's salary, hourly rates, or a flat fee. Thus, considering your return on investment (ROI) when deciding on the cooperation is essential.

Cost of recruitment and how it impacts the cooperation model

Not all recruitment models automatically suit every business and their unique needs. Let's say you have already established an internal recruitment department. In that case, you might want to hire an agency just for candidate sourcing to increase the influx of candidates.

As we mentioned earlier, recruitment cost is one of the vital factors that impact the ROI of your cooperation with a recruiting agency. Whether you use an external recruitment agency or handle the process internally, several factors can affect recruitment costs:

• Overall time spent on recruitment
• Type of position (e.g. senior positions usually take more time to fill and involve extra recruitment efforts)
• Recruitment method (in-house recruitment costs or agency fees)
• Cost of sourcing channels like paid ads and job listings
• Recruitment software costs
• Loss of profits during candidate onboarding
• Cost of onboarding, training, and mentoring
• Legal and compliance costs (e.g. relocation or visa expenditures)

As a result, you'll be able to decide on the most efficient cooperation model with a recruitment agency depending on your budget, recruitment needs, and business goals. Let's review the most popular ones.

Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO)

What it is: Basically, recruitment process outsourcing works just as it sounds: it's a full or complete delegation of recruitment workflows to an external agency or a recruiter. It's a popular model that allows businesses to significantly reduce their hiring costs, optimize internal recruitment department's work, and get access to best practices and new tools.

Who will benefit the most from RPO: Startups of small companies without recruiters; companies with temporarily increasing hiring demand.

When RPO isn't a good choice: If you're not ready to share your internal workflows with people outside your organization or you have troubles with delegating tasks, this model might be a challenge for both sides.

Full-cycle recruiting

What it is: A complete taking over your hiring functions.

Who will benefit the most from full-cycle recruiting: Startups and product companies often struggle with effective recruitment processes. As a result, working with professionals who understand the ins and outs of the recruitment workflows and share their business values will enable them to jumpstart their hiring processes.

When it's not a good choice: If you have short-term or urgent hiring needs, full-cycle recruiting won't be a cost-effective option. 

Sourcing

What it is: Sourcing is the initial step to recruiting that includes candidates' research: their social media profiles or CVs, demographics, qualifications, interests, etc. 

Who will benefit the most from sourcing: Companies that want to discover the current situation in the job market (number of specialists in a specific location, their readiness to work in the office, salary range, and so on); Companies that want to accelerate their candidate search and access specialists with rare skills.

When it's not a good choice: If you don't have established hiring processes in place, it's better to start with the basics like RPO.

How to make recruitment of personnel efficient

Exclusive recruiting

It's a common myth that working with multiple recruitment agencies increases your chances to quickly find candidates. In fact, there is more value in hiring only one recruiting agency since it can cover the needs of recruiters professionally and offer favorable conditions exclusively to you. Moreover, you'll be able to avoid excessive management of external recruiters and potential overlap in communication with candidates.

Batch recruiting

Batch recruiting means hiring multiple specialists at once (e.g. for seasonal work, entry-level positions, or roles with similar job descriptions). As a result of batch recruiting, agencies can spread the cost of sourcing, screening, and interviewing candidates across a greater number of placements, resulting in lower per-hire costs.

Social recruiting

Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and X are great for candidate sourcing, employer branding and, ultimately, targeted recruitment. The established social recruiting process within the company allows for systematic savings on team expansion and extra costs like job ads promotion. Learn more about social recruiting on LinkedIn in our blog post.

Wrapping up

Brainy shares a few insights that'll help you close the vacancy quickly and efficiently:

1. At the start of cooperation with the recruiting agency, share your requirements, as well as the issues and problems that the specialist must solve.

2. Optimize the number of interviews to avoid unnecessary steps and bureaucracy.

3. Providing detailed feedback after the interview.

4. Set and follow feedback deadlines.

5. Keep consistent communication among recruiting agency recruiters and hiring managers.

5. Draft a list of must-have candidate requirements and the ones that can be taught later on.

Hopefully these tips have removed any doubt about working with a recruitment agency. If you have any questions left, feel free to contact us.