The ultimate guide – How to hire recruitment agencies

Putting in simple terms, Management is defined as, “art of getting work done through others”. And to achieve this objective, Management involves 5 steps, which are as follows:

1. Planning
2. Organizing
3. Staffing
4. Directing
5. Controlling

Each of these steps has its own significance. However, this article focuses on only one step of management, which is “Staffing”, which is central to all the activities.

Staffing is defined as “the process of finding and placing eligible candidates in an organization for specific positions”. The two most important aspects of Staffing are – Recruitment and Selection.

Recruitment refers to the process of searching and attracting the potential candidates and then inspiring them to apply for the vacancy in your organisation.

On the other hand, Selection is the process of hiring employees out of the shortlisted candidates and getting them on board in your organisation.

While Selection is a more of in-house activity, Recruitment is a more complex and time- consuming process. There are many sources of recruitment, which are explained below.
Sources of Recruitment

Broadly speaking, there are 2 types of recruitment:

1. Internal Recruitment
2. External Recruitment

Internal recruitment is done by searching people within existing workforce, without taking any external help. Typical internal recruitment is done through Promotions, Transfer, Employee Referral or using existing resume data bank.

On the other hand, External recruitment is done by searching people from outside the organisation. This gives an access to tap people outside the organisation. In this process, the organisation generally takes help from outside sources.

While there are many sources, which an organisation can take help from, the most prominent is use of Recruitment agencies.

Recruitment agencies are the firms that act as a bridge between the candidates looking for employment and companies looking for people to do the job. They help both the parties fulfil their needs. These agencies filter the candidates that the companies might be looking for and make the process of recruitment easy and smooth for the companies.

Benefits of Recruitment Agencies
When it comes to recruiting people for your organisation, recruitment agencies offer several benefits over other methods of recruitment. Some of the benefits are given below:

1. Access to greater talent pool: The Recruitment agencies have a pool of candidates who are looking for a job. The agency qualifies the candidates as per their qualification and experience and then offers them to organisations, looking for the candidates.
2. Get help from experts: The recruitment agencies hire people, who are expert at their job. They employ scientific and psychological tests to qualify the candidates, before they are sent to the organisation for interview. Many recruitment agencies are specialised in one or more sectors and they have the expertise which in-house team may not have.
3. Ideal for senior level employees: When it comes to hiring for senior positions, recruitment agencies are better placed to shortlist the candidates, using various psychological and scientific tools. Also hiring for senior position requires special skills, which these agencies possess.
4. Saves lot of time: The recruitment agencies first screen the candidates to check their eligibility for the required job. Once they are satisfied, they forward the resume of only the ‘shortlisted’ candidates to their client. This saves a lot of time of HR, as they have to select from already shortlisted candidates.
5. Saves Cost: Normal recruitment process involves releasing an advt in newspaper. Then once applications start coming in, there has to be a team to go through all the resumes and shortlist the candidates. Then comes calling the candidates for interview. All this involves huge cost. But when you deal with recruitment agencies, lot of this cost is saved.
6. Confidentiality: In case a company, wants to hire some people for a new project and does not want this information to go out in the market, hiring through a recruitment agency works the best in this case.
7. Job Guarantee: Many 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 refund the fee charged or find a new, replacement candidate for no extra charge.
8. Salary Benchmarking: In case a company is hiring for a new position and do not have any idea about the right package, in that case recruitment agencies can help them to decide an ideal salary using their knowledge about local market and salary patterns.

Many times, companies use in-house HR team for hiring people. But there are some times, when it makes sense to hire through Recruitment agencies. The following is a list of conditions, when you should hire a recruitment agency:
1.There is a job vacancy, which in-house team is not able to fill
There are cases, when the in-house team is not able to attract good candidates through advt in newspaper or online job portals. This is very true for small business, start-ups or nice positions. In such cases, recruitment agencies can better evaluate your business in depth, and can find the perfect candidate who share the same visions as yours.

2.You don’t have time to hire people.
Recruitment is a full time job. It starts with releasing advt, receiving job applications. reviewing various resumes, short listing eligible candidates, calling them for interviews and discussing candidates with other decision-makers takes lot of precious time. And if you get candidates who are not fit for the job, this results in lot of waste of time and money. So, when you have limited time at hand, hiring a staffing agency can save lot of time. You have to just brief the agency and they will arrange interview a few candidates, out of which you can select the one you like.

3.Your organization is going through change
When your organisation is going through some transition and you are looking at hiring for some new positions, chances are there that you may not have capability to evaluate the candidates. In such cases, the organisation should consider hiring a recruitment agency.

4.The hiring requirement may be for short time
There are times, when an organisation has vacancy which may be for short term only. In such cases, hiring through in-house team may create a liability for the organisation. But, through a recruitment agency, you may hire people only for the duration required. These employees are called contractual or temporary employees, who work only for a specific period of time.

Many companies trust their in-house HR team for hiring as they understand the company culture and values better than any outside source. But, if you look at the time and cost saving and getting better talent as well, it takes a great business sense to hire through a recruitment agency. The only thing an organisation needs to do is to collaborate with a good agency, Pacific being one of such great recruitment companies, which can easily can understand your company and job requirements.