What does a Recruiting Agency do?
Personnel recruiting or recruitment is the area in personnel management that aims to fill a specific position. The core task is to supply companies with qualitative workers according to the companies’ requests. Recruiters identify, plan and solve personnel requirements.
Employee retention is the magic word for the future of recruiting. Qualified personnel is a sought-after resource today. Understanding and fulfilling the wishes of both applicants and companies plays a central role in recruiting. What does a Recruiting Agency do? In the following some central functions are listed.
Tasks of Recruiting Agencies
- Creation of requirement profiles: Anyone looking for well-trained personnel must know and analyze the requirements, wishes and needs of the company. A requirement profile is a list of qualities and skills that candidates should have.
- Publishing job postings: The requirement profile becomes the job profile. Recruiters write tenders and ensure that they are seen. Today, this is largely done by job postings online in portals such as XING, LinkedIn, Facebook or Google.
- Contacting applicants: Communication is one of the core competencies of recruiters. They should be open and communicative in order to bring the application process to a successful conclusion for everyone involved.
- Conducting interviews: Recruiters conduct job interviews in the form of telephone interviews, video interviews or face-to-face interviews. Tools for personnel selection, such as questioning techniques and structured interviews are available to them.
- Selection of applicants: Recruiters need to demonstrate analytical skills in selecting the best talents for the position to me filled. It starts with the evaluation of the application letters résumés and interviews. Another method of personnel selection is the assessment center.
- Contract drafting: In consultation with the relevant specialist departments, recruiters are also involved in drafting contracts.
- Help shape personnel development: Internal recruiting methods, such as promoting the existing workforce through further training measures, can also be part of a recruiter’s task.
What is the difference between a recruitment agency and a staffing agency?
There are several steps to filling a position. Nonetheless, the name of this practice often gives rise to uncertainty. In fact, there are differences between staffing and recruitment. What is the difference between a recruitment agency and a staffing agency?
What is Staffing?
Staffing is one type of job filling. The focus here is primarily on short-term employments or specific projects. In the first place, staffing involves actively seeking candidates rather than people who are skilled but not looking for a change.
A good staffing agency sets up a pool of candidates who are interested in short-term jobs or specific projects. The staffing agency can therefore offer candidates a job more often through regular contact and exchange of information. When companies approach the agency, recruiters can interview candidates from their pool and fill the required positions relatively quickly.
The details discussed in this type off job filling mainly relate to time and compensation. What is the average recruitment agencies fee? When staffing, average fees tend to be lower than in recruitment as jobs are short-timed and often don’t require top qualified workers. This can obviously vary depending on the project requirement.
What is Recruiting?
Recruiting is arguably the most challenging type of job filling. In addition to the usual recruitment processes, this is primarily an ongoing process in which a candidate “first approach” is used rather than offering the candidate roles that have already been defined.
Recruiting agencies contact well-skilled candidates and offer them to become part of a company that suits them.
In addition to actively searching candidates, recruiters focus on passive candidatures. Here, as in staffing, a candidate pool is created in which candidates are constantly researched and retained for upcoming and suitable positions. Highly qualified managers are often recruited for high positions through this type of recruitment. They often have the quality of bringing changes and improvements to a company and to make processes more efficient.
Most caution and precaution should be observed when recruiting C-Level candidates since the person to be hired usually becomes an important and long-term support in the company and has to fit in with it. An unsuitable person in this context can lead a company in the wrong direction. For such candidates, the detailed discussions include not only higher remuneration but also a convincing corporate culture. Highly qualified candidates are only willing to accept a job offer with a round package of suitable personal and professional aspects.
For companies it is crucial to know the answer to “What is the difference between a recruitment agency and a staffing agency?” and “How do I find a good recruitment agency?” in order to approach an effective candidate search and a successful vacancy filling.
Is it better to apply directly or through a recruiter?
Recruiters are an interface between companies and applicants. They have a broad data pool and networks from which they can filter out the right employees quickly and cost-effectively and bring them together with companies. However, candidates often wonder: Is it better to apply directly or through a recruiter? Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
Applying directly
Sending an application directly to a company seems to most applicants to be the quicker and easier way to find and fill a vacant position. Because there is no intermediate party in the application process, the process makes a less misleading and less bureaucratic impression.
This may be true in some cases, because the candidates are not dependent on an external recruitment agency and do not feel the pressure of fulfilling an agency’s requirements. Job-seeking people can apply for various job offers from a company and not just for those that an agency provides for a candidate. However, applying through a recruiter bares advantages to applicants which through traditional and direct applying cannot be appreciated.
Applying through a recruiter
One of the main advantages of applying through an agency is that a recruiter deals extensively with the skills, the cv and the corresponding employment opportunities of the applicants. Recruiters accompany and guide candidates in application processes and give constructive advice. Job-seekers need to send only one application to the recruitment agency, which then compares the profile with fitting job offers and positions.
Recruiting agencies also often determine the time span of an application process and can minimize the candidates’ uncertainties during the process. In addition, recruiters negotiate compensation and other issues that can be rather unpleasant in a direct application process. Recruiters are skilled negotiators and also relieve candidates of unpleasant burdens.
In contrast to companies, recruiters take their time and give feedback on the application process and suggestions for improvement in the event of unsuccessful application processes. For lower-qualified job-seekers, is it better to apply directly or through a recruiter? Indeed, recruiters can find qualities in lower qualified people that hadn’t seemed evident. Recruiters find niches and widen the range of job opportunities also for low-profile candidates.
Recruiting agencies should also not be underestimated when it comes to the quantity and quality of job offers. They have more information about companies and their job requirements than what can be seen in job portals. Successful recruiting agencies have mostly a “direct line” to many HR managers from a wide variety of industries. Their aim and economic motivation is to place candidates successfully in a company which is why they invest efficient effort in applicants and their right fit.
How do I find a good recruitment agency?
Good recruiting agencies cannot be compared with ordinary job offer portals. They are intended to offer more than just a forwarding of CVs and the promotion of vacant positions. Good agencies deal extensively with companies and potential candidates. But: How do I find a good recruitment agency? And: What does a Recruiting Agency do?.
A good business card can be the traditional recommendation of other colleagues or people in similar professional environments. In addition, the digital exchange of information enables thorough research into the agency’s profile. LinkedIn, for example, is one of the main contact points for recruiting agencies, and that’s where they also introduce themselves. Knowledge of experience in other companies can be obtained via such internet portals.
The agency’s own website can also provide information about the quality of their solutions. Comparison portals in the recruitment field can provide help with the evaluation by using key words in the search. Last but not least, a direct exchange with the agency can give more precise information about their field of competences.
What is the average recruitment agencies fee?
The answer to the question depends on the type of the position to be filled. The costs of recruiting agencies can vary greatly. Often a commission is agreed for the agency, which is based on the gross annual salary of the vacant position. 20–30 percent is roughly the average, and highly specialized headhunters like to move above this.
For short-time positions or special projects, a fix commission can be agreed. The commission fee for the recruiting agencies is usually due when the position has been successfully filled.
