The demand for technical talent is bigger than the supply. And if you work in an organization where there is a need for technical people then you experience pain on an almost daily basis. Because you are being pressured from all sides to find more qualified people, and it is hard to know where to start when there is a lack of knowledge in that area. If you have already used all the resources that are available to you, and you want results quickly, then you are likely to decide to work with an external recruiter. 

In this blog post I will explain why this seemingly quick solution isn’t solving your problem.

Unfortunately there are very few companies that are really satisfied with this new collaboration. This has a few causes:

External recruiters are indeed external, so understandably they are less involved in your organization than your own people. And less involvement means less commitment. They don’t worry or lie awake when your growth objective isn’t being achieved.

When you decide to work with an external recruitment agency you need to take into account that their focus is not only on your vacancies. Their attention is divided between their different clients and differents areas or states they work in as a company. 

There are a lot of agencies out there that claim to be specialized in one area or the other but unfortunately few of them actually are. The majority uses a so-called scattergun approach. It’s like firing many pellets into the air hoping that one or two might hit the target. Which means that a lot of recruiters take on a lot of different vacancies in their attempt to fill as many vacancies as possible so the quality of the profiles offered often leave something to be desired.

Because you outsource your sourcing, or a part of it, a lot of knowledge and network is being gathered by a company that isn’t yours and isn’t going to transfer that knowledge and network. And that’s a shame because a talent network is very valuable.

One of the complaints that I hear a lot is that recruitment agencies are very expensive and they offer very low guarantee. Per placement you easily owe the agency a fee somewhere between 10K and 20K, and many companies spend about 50K – 100K per year for recruitment agencies. Keep in mind that the recruitment agencies take on a lot of risk before an actual hire because they already invest time and money in actually finding the candidate. So understandably they can’t also take on a lot of risk after the hire is finalized. Another reason that they can’t offer a lot of guarantees is that these organizations are not actively (being) involved in making the relationship with your new employee successful.

Now, this post is not meant to bash external recruiters. They can definitely be of added value next to your own efforts, provided that they know your market really well and have the right values when it comes to recruitment. But because the costs for hiring a recruitment agency can really add up and the involvement is relatively low, the advice is to also invest in making your own recruitment strategy stronger, because you are going to need it.