Keys to a successful relationship with a recruitment agency
A recruitment agency is there to help you find your dream candidate to start as soon as possible. You want to best value for your business and don’t want to be paying over the odds. We completely get that, and so do most other agencies. What you must be careful of is going too far!
So, with recruitment consultants always up against a lot of competition, there are always times where you work hard on a vacancy, but don’t earn a penny because someone from another agency managed to put a slightly better candidate forward. This risk is part and parcel of working in recruitment, but it means that recruiters have to get smart and prioritise the roles that they feel they can get the most success from.A recruitment agency is like any other business, its primary goal is to make as much money as it possibly can so that it can continue to sustain itself and grow. There are a few different models, but the typical model for a recruitment agency is whereby they advertise a vacancy, source candidates and conduct telephone interviews to discuss the role. Then they will send the best quality CVs they can find to the hiring manager, who will shortlist their favourites and ask the recruiter to arrange interviews and prepare the candidates. At the end of it all, the recruiter will hopefully receive a job offer for one of their submitted candidates, and the agency will charge a determined fee based on the salary (typically 12-15%). It’s worth noting that the recruitment agency earns no money at all until one of their candidates starts in a role.
Let’s say a recruiter has two different vacancies to work from; one for a company that uses four other agencies, and another vacancy for a company that only uses this recruiter. Which one do you think the recruiter will spend most time working on? Assuming that the recruiter is good enough to find quality candidates, they have a 100% chance of earning commission from the second company, but just a 20% chance of earning commission on the second vacancy.
Similarly, if one company is only willing to pay 8% of the salary as a fee, whereas the other company is willing to pay 15%, then again, the recruiter is obviously going to spend more time on the second vacancy as they will be earning almost double if they place the candidate.
So when you’re going out to recruiters, always think about what sort of service you want. Higher fees, smaller number of agencies used and a more considerate rebate structure are more likely to yield better results when it comes to the candidates that you receive.
