How to Choose the Right Recruitment Agency

In today’s highly competitive workforce, finding the right employees can be time consuming, strenuous, and extremely tedious. Many companies use recruitment agencies to help them scout the best-fit employee and move the hiring process along quickly. However, choosing a recruitment agency can be quite daunting.

There are multiple factors that go into one's decision in choosing to use a recruitment agency, including what level position you’re looking to hire for, determining your budget and deciding what type of recruitment agency is best for your needs. Typically, there are 3 different types of recruitment agencies:

• General Recruiting Agency: This type of agency focuses on a specific industry, such as finance recruiting, healthcare recruiting, technology recruiting, etc. Use this type of agency when you’re looking to fill entry or mid-level positions in a specific industry.
• Staffing Recruitment Agency: These types of agencies focus on hiring employees temporarily. Use this type of agency when you’re looking to hire seasonal workers or filling in due to maternal or paternal leave.
• Executive Recruitment Agency: Use this type of agency when you’re looking to fill top positions or C-suite positions.

Not only does utilizing a recruiting agency benefit companies, it’s also a useful service to people searching for jobs. If someone’s previous experience and current job desires fit the job description you’re trying to fill, the potential employee will be notified that there’s a job opening that could be of interest to them. This saves money, time and energy knowing that there’s a middleman in between job seekers and employers that will navigate the job market for people.

There’s an extremely wide variety of recruitment agencies out there. Some with thousands of employees and some with just a few. The advantage to a larger agency is that they typically are more established and have a strong reputation, but smaller agencies can be more specialized in certain areas and therefore can narrow in on what exactly you need. Neither are bad, it just simply depends on what you’re looking for and the nature of your needs.

Another benefit of using a recruitment agency that companies might not be aware of is that they can take care of a lot of the front-end onboarding paperwork, including payroll taxes, workers’ compensation, and employment benefits. They also conduct background checks and make sure that the information on resumes match up to who they say they are. Recruitment agencies spend years building out their database of candidates, and some can even find companies with a strong list of candidates within 24-48 hours. In addition, these agencies are always in the know of everything that is going on in the job market, staying abreast of the latest industry trends, and will be able to help you in an extremely time efficient, professional, and cost-effective manner.

Most recruitment agencies provide the luxury of security when it comes to retaining new hires. If your employee leaves or is terminated from the company within a certain time frame of being hired (usually somewhere in between 3-6 months), then the recruiting agency will either give you a full refund or find you a new candidate quickly at no charge. Another perk of using a recruiting agency is that it will improve or retain the professional appearance of a company. Some companies, especially start-ups or smaller companies, don’t have an in-house person who specializes in recruiting. Therefore, it’s worth the money to hire a recruiting agency so that you can be sure that the hiring process is done in a professional manner with a recruiter who is highly trained and knows the ins and outs of recruiting to ensure the process runs smoothly.

It also saves time so that an in-house person doesn't have to stray away from the responsibilities of their own job. Recruiting agencies have access to databases where they can reach out to candidates directly and in a timely fashion, therefore accelerating the process of hiring. Using a recruitment agency increases the odds of hiring the right person the first time, and not making the mistake of hiring someone who isn’t fit for the job.

Overall, the most important factors to consider when choosing what recruiting agency to use are to determine what position you’re hiring for (if it is temporary or full time, or if it is an entry/mid/senior level position) and your budget. Once you decide these things, it’ll be clear what type of agency to hire — your company will reap the benefits of utilizing a recruitment agency.