How Recruitment Consultancies Can Help Your SME
The hiring process can be a long and costly endeavour, and getting it wrong can be a substantial burden on a small organisation. Because of this, it is vital to get the right candidate the first time, and ideally in a short amount of time.
As an SME, you probably don’t have an internal recruiter, and it can put unnecessary pressure on your HR department having them support the burden of marketing the opening, screening and interviewing candidates, and then conducting the admin associated with offering the candidate. You may be able to deal with this hassle if you’re just hiring one candidate, but if you are looking at taking on a handful of new recruits, it can swamp you in excess work meaning you are unable to do your own actual job. Here are 4 reasons why recruiters are the ideal solution to your hiring needs:
1. Time is money
Instead of having an in-house recruiter all year around and not needing them because you only hire sporadically, you can use an external recruiter if and when you require new talent. Along with this, it is common to have multiple agencies working on one role at the same time, meaning you’d have numerous consultants out there working hard to find that diamond in the rough. You’ll have more manpower at only one fee, because the winner is the only one who gets paid.
- You don’t have to deal with communication with the candidate; the recruiter will deal with arranging interviews, giving feedback (positive and negative), gathering references, and everything between. As well as this, we conduct a preliminary interview, so we only send candidates we know are right.
- A big part of the recruiting process is being on the phone for a large chunk of the day, cold-calling candidates. An HR team in a small organisation wouldn’t have the time to be going to such measures, so external recruiters doing it for you saves bags of time. Recruiters also call applicants from job ads, a large proportion of which are unsuitable due a whole host of things: level of qualification, experience, or they may just not be right for the job. Someone else will be in charge of sifting out the duds for you, saving heaps of time.
Long-term sidenote: hiring people you know are right for your company may mean they stay with you longer, less turnover fees for hiring and training replacements.
2. Experience and market knowledge
Recruiters have extensive market knowledge, and experience rooting out those hard-to-find candidates – in short, they know how to find what you’re looking for.
- Recruiters have a deep understand of hiring and the interview process, which can make it run more smoothly than it may go with an in-house HR professional who is inexperienced in recruiting (say the recruiter has 5 or 10 years’ experience vs. an HR exec who has only hired one or two people).
- We have experience finding what you’re looking for. We know where to look, what qualities and experience to spot, where to find the diamonds in the rough, etc. meaning we can find better quality candidates in less time.
3. Reach
Recruiters have a breadth of connections through previous business, whether it’s placed candidates or referrals.
- In an industry that revolves around building relationships, recruiters inevitably know people. There will be candidates who have previously been placed and may be ready to move, or previous candidates refer their colleagues/friends/whoever.
- Recruiters know lots of people in the industry who aren’t necessarily out there on job boards or actively putting themselves out there in the cyber universe. This may be because they’re not actively looking to move or it may be that a candidate is really good, and get reached out to.
4. Reputation
A recruiter will only send you candidates they think are actually hireable and will be a good fit with you because their business reputation is on the line.
- Word of mouth is the most valued form of opinion and referral, so if a recruitment agency send bad candidates, it would reflect badly on them. In the business world, where everyone knows everyone, a negative review can spread like wildfire.
Additionally:
If you make the decision to use a recruiter, you will build a business relationship with them that will be beneficial in the long-term, and not just helpful for your immediate hiring needs. Once you have built trust in them and their level of service, the recruitment process will run much smoother and quicker each time you get their help, as they become more familiar with your business needs and company requirements.
If you’re looking for a recruitment specialist to provide your company with top quality candidates, whether that may be for Recruitment, Sales or Office Support vacancies, get in touch with us here at 5Q Consultancy. Contact one of our expert Consultants on 0203 700 8483, or email caitlin@5-q.co.uk, and we’d be more than happy to have a chat about how we may be of assistance to your business needs
