Many people have very strong opinions about why it is better to find a job on your own rather than use a recruiter. A lot of people feel that recruiters are ‘salespeople’ that are trying to use you to make money, many others feel that they provide an unnecessary service. This article is going to attempt to dispel the mystique that is associated with recruitment agencies, and explain why it is in your advantage to use a recruiter. Here are some of the most common objections that I hear while speaking with a potential candidate:
1. “The agency” will take a cut of my wages; I can make more money if I get the job myself.
2. A recruiter cannot do anything for me that I can’t do for myself.
3. Agencies will just try and ‘low ball’ me on my salary/rate so that they can take a bigger cut from their client.
Many of these questions have to do with money, and it seems that most of the people that I speak to begrudge the fact that I have to make a living. They also fail to notice that I can provide them with a service that may prove to be invaluable. Allow me to start off by explaining how an agency works, and why companies use recruitment agencies rather than hiring internally.
Most HR departments lack a specific recruitment arm and people that are trained in HR have absolutely no recruitment training. HR is diametrically opposed to recruitment; one helps all people within a company and the other is trained to eliminated all candidates but the one that is best for the job. HR is customer service, “recruitment refers to the process of sourcing, screening, and selecting people for a job at an organization or firm (Wikipedia).” HR is in the interest of helping everyone that they come into contact with. This makes it very hard to eliminate candidates in a job selection process. It is also very expensive to maintain an in house recruitment arm when you don’t do a lot of hiring.
This is where an agency comes to the rescue. We have an accessible database of qualified candidates and chances are that one will match all of your job requirements. The cost of one of our candidates is fractional to the cost of running your own source, screen, interview, and hire process; an agency will actually end up saving mid-size companies on their on-boarding costs. We find a company the right candidate and give you a ‘trial period’ (usually 90 days) to make sure that they are going to fit in before you will even have to pay us. This is why a company will use a recruitment agency.
Our fees are not some magical number that we pull out of thin air, they are a percentage based on the rate / salary that we negotiate on the placement. For a permanent job, it is usually around 20% of the hiring salary and contract rates fluctuate very widely but average around 10 -15%. We make more money if you make more money not the other way around. Our contracts are based on a set mark-up percentage agreed to by the client to pay for the cost and convenience of the service that we provide them. The client would not pay a penny more to a direct hire due to the fact that they will now have to internalize the payroling and on-boarding process, greatly increasing their internal hiring costs.
Recruiters also have a lot to offer to job seekers. We know exactly what the client is looking for and have a much better ability to ‘sell’ a candidates skills to a client than even the most persistent candidate. We have the ability to dig a lot deeper into a clients job openings, and can tell a candidate exactly how to write the winning resume for a certain job. A recruiter knows what kind of interview style that a candidate is going to walk into and can give a candidate a competitive edge. Wouldn’t it be nice to know what kind of questions you are going to be asked days before a job interview? Agencies can even tell you what kind of specific hiring criteria you are going to be chosen by, making it possible for you to highlight your specific experience in those areas. Using a recruiter can dramatically increase your chance of getting a job.
debashish 