Top Recruiting Agencies

What Is A Recruiting Agency?

Recruiting agencies are external, third-party organizations that seek ideal job candidates for their clients’ job posts. They are tasked by employers to find employees for vacant or specialized positions within client organizations that don’t have direct access to top-tiered talent.

Recruiting companies are an essential addition to any business because hiring the right talent can take a significant amount of time and money.

Working with recruitment firms isn’t just time and cost-efficient - it is the candidate management and access to the most qualified hire prospects that make it a preferred choice for most organizations.

In-house HR teams can use a recruitment company to get both the best value and best candidates, therefore gaining a competitive edge on the market.

Most recruitment agencies offer a guarantee on the candidate placement which means that the element of risk on the business part is minimal or very limited.

What Do Recruiting Agencies Specialize In?

Recruiting companies’ work is straightforward: their main mission is finding the right candidates for clients’ job openings.

Top recruiting companies do this by researching the open roles, identifying qualified talent, reviewing their resumes, screening the candidates and providing support to the employer during the selection process.

Recruitment companies structure their services as follows:

• Contingency recruitment: Contingency recruiting refers to when a hired recruiting agency finds candidates for open positions. They only get paid if the client hires the selected candidate.
• On-demand recruitment: On-demand recruiting is focused on flexibility, efficiency, speed and industry-specific talent expertise. This service provides client organizations with the flexible choice of candidates when they need talent acquisition service.
• Retained/Executive search: Similarly to the previous points, in the case of a “retained” search, recruiting firms go out and recruit the best possible candidate for a specific position on behalf of a specific client. It is a specialized recruitment service that focuses on seeking and recruiting highly qualified candidates for senior-level and executive positions.
• Recruitment process outsourcing: Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) refers to when an organization transfers all or part of its recruitment to an external provider. Said provider, or recruiting company act as an extension of a company’s in-house HR team.

What Is The Difference Between Recruiting Companies And Employment Agencies?

Recruitment agencies are often confused with employment firms; however, they are not the same.

The biggest differences between recruiter companies and employment agencies are their priorities, or in other words, the parties they serve. Recruitment agencies serve employers and employment ones serve job seekers.

Recruitment agencies receive job descriptions, briefs and specifications from a client/worksite/employer and aim to find the perfect job seeker to match the proposed role.

An employment agency, on the other hand, registers job seekers (which are their clients) and then contacts worksites and employers who posted job openings to refer the job seekers for those roles.

Why Should You Work With Recruiting Agencies?

It’s projected that by 2023 there will be more than 97 million new job openings, which presents a significant opportunity for future employees. Yet, the access to a new talent pool is likely to stir an already competitive business environment and battle.

Hiring a recruitment company can be extremely beneficial not only to your internal HR department but to your organization as a whole. Here are some major advantages you can expect:

1. Faster Hiring Process

The main perk of hiring one of the top recruitment agencies is the shorter time it takes to fill your open positions. A recruitment company can find candidates much more swiftly and efficiently than an in-house HR team.

In fact, 51% of employers have open positions for which they can't find quality candidates.

They have an expansive database of available talent, a network of connections and access to the best systems that are able to locate people with unique and harder-to-find skillset.

2. Top-Tiered Talent

Hiring recruitment firms increases the likelihood of finding high-quality candidates. As already mentioned, their resources, paired with their screening processes ensure you’ll only meet with candidates that have already been assessed and interviewed.

3. Specialist Knowledge

As your organization grows and morphs, your in-house HR team has less time on their hands to conduct complex interviewing process for specialized positions they themselves are not familiar with.

Recruiting agencies have staff whose expertise lays in recruiting for one sector, vertical or industry. They have unique insight into your specific business needs, a better knowledge of the more technical roles you seek and the skills required to fulfill them.

For example, if you need a growth hacker, lead generation specialist, a cloud consultant, or any kind of expert for that matter, it's best to reach them via recruiting agencies services.

4. Market Knowledge

Through their experience in dealing with both clients and potential candidates, the best recruiting agencies gain expansive market knowledge about the sector they work in.

Besides the recruitment function, they are able to provide you with valuable insights and advice about the potential hiring opportunities you fail to see.

5. Reach

89% of talent say they accept a job offer faster if and when contacted by a recruiter.

Not all prospective candidates are actively looking for work, as they are either employed or, what recruitment firms call “passive talent” and they take a bit longer to find.

The likelihood of reaching these candidates without recruitment agencies is slim, as they know how to reach them and more importantly, how to incentivize them to become “active”.

How To Choose The Best Recruiting Company For Your Business

When choosing an ideal recruiting company “candidate” be sure to:

1. Explain your needs

The first step in selecting one of the best recruiting firms is to clearly explain your hiring needs to them. You need to plan accordingly if you’re aiming to hire one, a couple, or a whole team of employees and explain what positions are you planning to fill.

This will help you find the right recruiting company, specialized in your particular field and it will help you find the right person(el) based on your recruitment criteria.

2. Interview recruitment agencies

To get a general idea of whether the particular agency is capable of providing you with ideal candidates, you need to interview it.

This will help you get a general idea and a deeper insight into whether they are capable of delivering results to your specific needs.

3. Choose the right type of recruiting company

Identifying the right company fit demands to first clearly define your needs. Use these two tips to find the agency that perfectly fits your criteria:

• If you’re looking for short-term or temporary staff choose a staffing recruitment agency
• If you have needs for senior-level executives, you should opt for an executive recruitment agency

For anything else, any other level of hiring, your best choice will probably be a general recruitment agency as it also can be specialized in many fields.

4. Check your budget

Searching for top recruitment agencies should obviously be the first criteria, but it’s pointless if their services don’t fit your budget. The better the agency, the higher the price range will be.

The last steps may be obvious, but can be overlooked, especially if the need for new hires is immediate. Don’t forget to check the agency’s past experience and their general reputation in your industry.

How Much Do Recruiting Agencies Charge For Their Services?

If you’re considering working with some of the best recruiting companies for your hiring needs, you should have at least a general idea of what to expect from a cost perspective.

We should note that fee structures may vary from agency to agency, but recruiting agencies usually have two distinct fee structures:

• Direct hires
• Temporary staffing

The fee structure is largely dependent on the services recruitment agencies provide.

A direct hire represents a “permanent” employee, paid directly by the employer. For the direct hire, a recruitment agency typically charges a one-time fee, equal to a certain percentage (anywhere between 10% and 20%) of the hire’s salary.

Some agencies may charge as much as 25% for those hard-to-fill roles.

As the name suggests, temporary staffing is just that – temporary. Many recruiting agencies have their own temporary workers on the payroll, assigning them to different periods for specific periods.

With the temporary staffing, the client company typically pays the employee’s hourly rate and associated costs (25% - 100% in markup) to the recruitment agency directly, then the agency pays said employee.

Retained/Executive recruitment is usually charged with an up-front fee determined before filling the role.

It’s worth noting that fees can vary wildly across industries, market conditions and specialization profiles.

10 Questions To Ask Top Recruiting Companies Before You Hire One

Before hiring one of the recruitment agencies from the list above, ask each one of your prospective partners the following questions.

1. What is your pricing structure and what are your fees?
2. Do you speak to every candidate before submitting his/her CV to us?
3. Do you actively find passive candidates or just search through your database?
4. What is your experience recruiting within our industry?
5. What were the last 3 jobs you filled in our industry/market?
6. How often do you get client or candidate referrals for business?
7. How do you market or advertise your vacancies?
8. How do you choose/screen/shortlist the applicants?
9. Do you test your applicants or use psychometric tests?
10. What’s your guarantee?

Takeaways On Recruiting Agencies

As third-part providers, recruiting companies connect employers with the best-fit talent. They specialize in:

• Contingency recruitment
• On-demand recruitment
• Retained/Executive search
• Recruitment process outsourcing
• And more

Recruitment agencies bring a myriad of benefits to the recruiting process and client company itself, chief of which are:

• Faster hiring process
• Access to top talent
• Deep specialist and market knowledge
• Extensive reach

Before choosing the best recruiting company, be sure to:

• Clearly explain your hiring needs
• Interview recruitment agencies
• Choose the right type of agency
• Check your budget
• Check agency’s experience
• Check agency’s reputation

Best of luck!

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