Recruitment Agency Insight - Guest Blog from Kevin Wright

Love them or hate them Recruitment companies are everywhere. When  I go to my local newsagent or takeaway they get into conversation about what I do, so I tell them ,then they tell me “Oh there was one on every street corner in 2007” and then they tell me today they see none. I believe they get this impression from their rare trips to town but look up at shared office blocks and you will see that there are now more than 15,000 of us in the UK.

Every company has to hit targets and has to make sales, be this by way of cold calls, snail mail, television marketing, media advertising, the one thing all companies have in common is they are there to make a profit and to do this they have to sell their service. When I and my team have made what is known as a cold call I am often somewhat shocked by the lack of interest from the third party.

I am not going to guest blog about how fantastic recruitment agencies are now offering  great deals, but what I am going to do is offer you a true insight into recruitment methods and why a recruitment company / agency is good for your business. At the right rate of course J

As I said all companies have a goal and that is to make a profit and to achieve this we market in different ways. A recruitment company does not really have much free marketing available to it. We have to pay our respective job boards a set monthly fee to post positions, then we have to filter these down into suitable candidates. Without being rude you can get responses from people that are not skilled to do the job – take a look at this example.

I sent a speculative CV to a potential company I wanted to do business with. When he received my email he mailed me back and said “Thanks Kev I have just paid £1,500 to advertise my position in the local paper, I think I will be ok Thanks” – Ok I thought this is a rejection for now so I will just file this accordingly. (2 weeks). I emailed the prospect back to ask how his advert went; he then got back to me and said “Is your offer still available? It seems to have been more hassle than it was worth” – Further investigation led me to no surprise, they had a small ad and the online free ad on the jobcentre was scary,it was lacking substance and the benefits of the position.

Without being rude, the Ad made it look as if anybody could apply, which of course you can, but let’s be realistic you need to have some experience especially in this £18,000 basic + *% comm role anyway and us recruitment consultants are fully trained in writing a good Ad to attract the correct applicant. With the boards we utilise and pay for we have ample space as the job centre limits you to around 800 words. 800 words is not enough if you are serious about attracting the correct candidate.

So there he was with £1,500 gone with a total of 1 placement from this, I offered him a deal, I explained a little more about what I do, how we do it, and how this would save him time and money in the long run, he quickly agreed to allow me to recruit for him.

Now back to marketing.  We have to pay for all of our candidate and client marketing; however there is the Job centre which is cool. There are people who have been unemployed for long amounts of time and are looking for work and you can get some good people from there, but the chances of you filling your post to your specific requirements is dramatically reduced as opposed to using a recruitment agency. If I have not made it clear, we pay for our candidate marketing with companies who have invested in SEO to get their posts to the top of Google; this gives us a far better chance of filing your positions for you. We are able to select a shortlist of how many people you need and present it to you, and the best bit about it - what? They all match what you are looking for to the letter therefore whatever you pay an agency is worth it as opposed to pointless media advertising and Job centres ads (depending on the role)

Have a great 2010 everybody

TimeEazy Recruitment

2 comments:

  1. Maybe i should have used you Kev, because the agency i went through to recruit new consultants sent me a bucket load of cv's of people who only match with one word from my requirements ( human ) and some of those were debatable. Before i set up my own companies i used to register with recruitment agencies for jobs and also use to get sent roles which only match afew so called key words, so the majority of jobs, i was not suitable for or not what i wanted. sometimes putting an ad in the local press can atract people to roles that they didn't even think about, even though they might be suited for with a bit of thought. When i recruit i actually like to get the people in who have little experience or would like a change of career, as long as they have the right attitude to work, they can be moulded.
    In summary i enjoyed your blog but unfortunately for your type of business like so many there are a few which promise the world but end up delivering the same old s**t. this is in no way a representation on you and your company, but might provide you with an insight into why some business owners are abit negative towards recruitment agencies.

    I will give you a call in next few weeks to see what you can offer as i'm taking on more consultants in coming months. hopefully you can change my experiences of past.

    kind regards

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  2. Colin,

    Thank you and not at all your comments are very much valued and are true. I feel what does happen on a regular basis is that most agencies will churn out whatever they have regardless of the skills match.

    It can take 3/4 days to properly fill a position, where most will as I say be fire happy. I do not operate in the same method.

    Please do feel free to contact me, I will send you an email soon, and if you use our service you can then blog about how your experience was changed.

    Kevin

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