Step by Step Guide to Choosing a Recruitment Agency

This ultimate guide for choosing a recruitment agency will prove to be your biggest helping hand. It will help you find a suitable recruitment agency that accommodates your hiring needs as well as your budget. Later in the article, we’ll list 5 reasons how a recruitment agency can help your business. Along with some helpful recommendations for choosing a relevant recruiting agency.

What is a Recruitment Agency?

A recruitment agency or recruiting agency is a consultancy company that provides recruitment service for another company (client) based upon their HR (Human resource) needs. In simple words, the Recruitment agency is a middle man between Employers and job seekers. They charge a flat or percentage fee for this service.

Recruitment companies serve as a platform to connect people looking for jobs with companies that are in search of suitable employees for a respective post. Recruitment agencies are paid to find workers for different organizations that fit a certain job.
Why should you use a recruitment agency?
Today’s job market is competitive and hiring costs are sky-high. It is really hard to find an ideal human resource with a conventional recruitment drive. Recruitment agencies specialize in the recruitment process. Therefore choosing a recruitment agency to find the perfect fit for a job role using an expert recruiting agency.

Here are 5 reasons why a recruitment agency is worth trying.

Cut down Hiring costs. Save all the recruiting hassle by simply outsourcing it. According to research, a new employee takes approximately 8 to 26 weeks to become fully productive. And the expense, the company bears during this period contributes to the “hiring cost”. Since hiring costs are much higher in today’s job market. Let alone the time and efforts spent in conducting a successful recruitment drive. So You want to make sure that you find the right candidate to avoid losing money on hiring.

Save a lot of time. Recruiters already have access to quality human resources. You send a requirement and they give you the right man for the job.
The whole hiring process can take a lot of your time and prove to be quite stressful. There are two ways through which such agencies will save your time. First, recruitment agencies will save your candidates’ time. Second, their duty is to recruit which is why these professionals have long lists of applicants who can be suitable for a certain job. Hence, it will squeeze the hiring process and will give you accurate employees in a very short time.
Find the best candidate. 3rd party recruiters have strong connections with industry experts and other HR, which helps them find Human resource which is not available directly.
Recruitment agencies have tons of applications of people who have specialized in various different fields and industries within their reach. This gives another reason to the companies to contact recruitment agencies for improved quality of hire.

Background screening. Recruiters specialize in thorough background checks and screening. And they also have most f the essential information about a candidate already.
For almost every company, among all services recruitment agencies have to offer is that they offer “additional security”. All the trustworthy recruitment agencies will give you a “guarantee period”, in which your new employee stays in your company under observation for a specific period of time. If that fresh candidate is fired or leaves before the guarantee period ends, recruitment agencies will either give you a full refund or find another suitable match for the post. In short, such agencies will help you find and keep the right candidate in less time and money.

HR outsourcing to experts. Today is the era of specialization. Be it any business process, you need expert people. 3rd party recruitment agencies are experts in this very thing, so they can do the job like no other, provided you give them the right requirements. When it comes to new companies and start-ups, they don’t have efficient in-house recruiters. Such companies don’t have enough knowledge and resources to find a suitable candidate for themselves; for that matter, they rely on recruitment agencies to get better results for them.

How does manpower Recruitment Agency work?

A 3rd party manpower agency or a recruitment agency acts as an intermediary between the Employer (corporate) and the Jobseeker. Employer / Company shares requirements, with a recruiter, as per their staffing needs. The recruitment consultant then finds the top human resource for that particular role, for a (fixed or percentage-based) recruiting service fee.

Tip: Always Check legal status and verify that you are working with a
BEOE approved Overseas employment promoter or Recruitment agent

What is the average recruitment agency fee?

The cost of a recruitment agency to an employer will really depend on the role being filled. Standard recruitment costs tend to range between 15% and 20% of a candidate’s first annual salary, but this can go as high as 30% for hard-to-fill positions.

The most important question employers want to know is the cost of this process and who can afford it? According to Bersin by Deloitte, the average expense to fill an open position in-house is around $4,000. But we need to keep in mind that this is an average estimation so it will differ depending on role, strategies used, etc. The agency fee also depends on the “position” you are searching for to fill. Most of the recruitment agencies have different fees that depend upon the following things

• Number of people you need to hire
  Industry
  Type of position
  The salary for the position
  The type of hire (permanent or temporary, full-time or part-time, etc.).

Generally, the process through which recruitment agencies calculate their fee is by calculating some percentage of the yearly salary of the new candidate. According to “Undercover Recruiter”, most of the recruiting agencies charge from 15% and 25% of the employee’s first years total earnings.

However, for positions that are difficult to be filled or are high-ranked, recruitment fees can also go up to 50%.

For an easy understanding of how fees work, below is an example from CV library:

Junior role – advertised salary $9,000
Agency fees would be around 10%, so you would pay around $900 per hire.
Executive role – advertised salary $30,000
Agency fees would be around 15-20%, so you could pay from $4500 to $6000 per hire.

Types of Recruitment Agencies

There is a broad range of different types of recruitment agencies in the market. Recruitment agencies offer diverse services and they come in different shapes and sizes. We’ll discuss them below

The best way is to look for the most common agency types that will help you in a better way and will be able to fit all your hiring needs effectively. The different kinds mentioned below will make it easy for you to know different types of recruitment agencies.

Type 1: General recruiting agencies

A general recruitment agency is the kind of agency that targets a particular field. Their main focus is to employ someone who has specialties for a specific position. For example, healthcare recruiting, hospitality recruiting, retail recruiting, finance recruiting, or technology recruiting. Another name for General recruiting agencies is contingency recruiting agency.

Contact this kind of agency when you need a worker for a middle position in an industry.

Type 2: Staffing recruitment agency

Staffing recruitment agencies are another category of agencies that only aims for hiring workers for temporary posts. Another name for staffing recruiting agencies is a temporary recruiting agency.

Get in touch with such agencies when you need to hire seasonal candidates for some temporary project or when you have to fill the position of some full-time staff member who has gone on leave (extended sick or maternity or paternity leave).

Type 3: Executive recruitment agency

Executive recruitment agencies have expertise that handles executive recruiting. These agencies are known by many names such as Retained search firms or executive search firms; sometimes also called boutique recruiting firms.

Contact these types of agencies when you need an employee for your top-level or C-level positions.

Choosing a Recruitment Agency; 4 Steps Checklist

Below is a 4-step procedure that makes it easy for you to choose a recruiting agency according to your hiring needs as well as budget.

Step #1: Define your hiring needs:

The first and most basic step for any firm before contacting a recruiting agency is to clearly mention their hiring needs. Addressing questions like how many employees you are looking for? What is the kind of position you are looking for a worker for? Is it entry-level or executive-level? Temporary or permanent? Do you want an employee who is skilled in a specific field or is an all-rounder? Clearly defining and understanding your own hiring needs in detail is important for finding the best recruitment agency for you.

Step #2: Choose the right recruitment agency type:

This step becomes very easy if you have followed the first step properly. The second step is to search for a relevant recruitment agency. This step will help you shortlist some agencies that serve your purpose.

If you are in need of some temporary workers, you’ll go to a staffing recruitment agency. If your high-level executive post is to be filled then you will contact the Executive recruitment agency. For anything else, your wise choice should be a general recruiting agency.

Step #3: Check affordability:

Once you have found the best recruitment agency that suits your needs then look for its affordability because obviously if their rates won’t suit you then that agency is of no use. Most of the agencies have mentioned all basic information on their website. But to get a clear picture and detailed idea, you will have to contact them. You can make a list of all relevant agencies and ask them about their services, prices, terms, etc.

Step #4: Check the expertise:

If you have carefully followed all previous steps then by this step you have shortlisted the top three recruitment agencies. You will have to do some homework, find the expertise of chosen agencies and compare with each other.

Look for their guarantee period, terms, and client list. Study their clients and place candidate’s testimonials (for example, check out great client testimonial videos from Manila Recruitment agency). Social media plays a great role, see if they are active on social media, their membership with professional associations. Also look for their status on recruitment agencies’ top lists and review sites from different sources.

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