What is one advantage to private employment agencies as a means of recruiting employees?

Should you turn to a recruitment agency to help you fill your open job positions?

Why do companies turn to recruitment agencies?

In today’s highly competitive, candidate-driven job market, finding and hiring the ideal job candidate is quite hard. This is why many companies turn to recruitment agencies to help them recruit the right people for their open job positions.

Should you do the same? How can a recruitment agency help you fill your open job positions?

Most common reasons for using a recruitment agency

There are many benefits that come with using services from a recruitment agency.

A good recruitment agency can help you:

Hire candidates faster

There are two main ways in which using a recruitment agency can save your company’s time. First, a hiring process can be quite time-consuming. Using a recruitment agency can help you save your employees’ time.

Second, recruitment agencies are professionals who recruit for living. This is why they probably already have candidates in their applicant pool who are exactly the right fit for your open job positions. This is a great advantage that can significantly shorten the full cycle recruiting process. In other words, you can hire the best candidate much faster!

Hire highly qualified candidates

The second main reason why many companies turn to recruitment agencies is to improve their quality of hire. The main advantage of using a recruitment agency is that most of them are specialized in certain industries or functions, which means they already have a pool of highly skilled candidates at their disposal. Besides, recruitment agencies recruit for living, which means that they have an expertise not only in finding great candidates, but also making sure that these candidates are indeed a great fit for a certain position.

Keep your professional appearance

Some companies, such as startups and small companies, don’t have a dedicated in-house recruiter. These companies lack the expertise and resources to find and hire the best candidates. To ensure that their hiring process is done professionally and effectively, they choose to use the services of recruitment agencies. If you don’t know how to recruit in a highly professional manner, it is best to leave it to experts form recruitment agencies.

Retain your new hires

For many companies, the most important advantage of using a recruitment agency instead of in-house recruiters, is that recruitment agencies offer additional security when it comes to new hire retention. All the best recruitment agencies offer guarantee periods. This means that they guarantee you that your new hire will stay at your company for a certain period of time (usually 3–6 months). If your new hire is terminated or leaves before the expiry of a guarantee period, recruitment agencies will give you a full refund or, most commonly, find a new, replacement candidate for no extra charge.

In short, choosing the right recruitment agency can help you recruit and retain the right people faster and even cheaper!

Private employment agencies have the largest share of the market and are now quite well known to most people from personal experience at local offices and advertisements in the press. Local employment agencies deal with jobs that are clerical, junior administrative, shop staff, IT professional etc. Another type of private agency concentrates on recruitment and, sometimes, the initial stages of selection of middle and senior managers or of professional and specialist staff in fields such as, law accountancy, engineering, etc. Private employment agencies provide at times a very valuable service, especially in recruiting staff in situations where there is a shortage of the particular types of employees required. However, since they exist to make a profit, employers have to pay for any employees they may recruit in this way.

There are also pros and cons that have to be carefully weighed, especially when these private employment agencies are used to assist in the selection of managerial or professional staff. The advantages are the specialist knowledge that an agency can acquire of the employment conditions and requirements in particular fields, objectivity of view and skill in conducting the selection procedure. The main possible disadvantage in using external assistance for recruitment and selection purposes is the agent's lack of first-hand experience of the cultural and environmental aspects of the organization's work and life.

There has been substantial growth of so-called 'head-hunters' or recruitment consultants. As the terms suggest, these are private firms and agencies of recruitment consultants who earn fees by meeting the job needs of organizations for specialist and senior managerial staff. Much of their work is carried on by means of an informal network of contacts, whereby they keep records of career profiles of people likely to be in constant demand, and obtain information about the needs of employers for appointments to be filled. This method has provided its value to the employer and employee clientele of these agencies.

Professional Employment Agencies

Several different kinds of agencies are included under the heading or Professional Employment Agency. The features they have in common are that they are all agencies set up by particular organizations to help their own members or ex-members find employment and that they are generally non-profit -making. The agencies of this kind that employers are likely to need and use most regularly are:-

1. Career services of academic institutions: Universities and similar institutions maintain a full-time career advisory service. They serve as an employment agency for graduating or recently graduated students, are centers of information for graduates about employment opportunities and for employers who are seeking potential managers or professional specialist.

2.Employment services of professional institutions: A number of professional institutions, such as those representing accounts, engineers, etc. have an employment advisory service whereby a register is kept of members seeking employment and information is collected from employers seeking staff in particular professions.

3. Employment exchange provided by the state service for young people provides a regular liaison between employers and unemployed youth.

While both types of employment agencies have flourished, a private employment agency with experience and professionalism is the most sought after.

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