Pros and Cons of Hiring a Recruiter

By Madison White on December 9, 2019

So you need to fill a position in your company. How do you go about finding the perfect person for that job? This is a question many companies face when it comes to hiring. Some companies look to external recruiting companies to fill this gap, but is that the right choice?

Pros:

1. Less work for your current staff

Hiring for a new position can be a large undertaking. Whether you are hiring just one full-time or many seasonal employees, the process will take up a good deal of time. Depending on your company, you may have a small staff that takes on many different tasks. If you assigned one of your staff members to hiring, it will take up a large chunk of their time and you could lose a good deal of usual work from them.

Even if you do have a person or small team dedicated to hiring, you could still benefit from a recruiter. Especially if you are looking for a very experienced person in a specific field, having a recruiter that is proficient in that field would be very helpful.

Overall, recruiters ease the workload that your current staff would have to do. They take care of advertising, looking through profiles, screening candidates during phone calls or video interviews, and deciding who is worthy of an interview. Especially if you are hiring multiple people, these are complicated and time-consuming tasks that you could avoid by hiring a recruiter to take over for you.

2. Likely to find better-suited candidates

As touched on previously, a recruiter does almost all of the preparation work before candidates come to you for interviews. As you may already know, advertising in public forums will bring a wide variety of candidates that do and don’t fit the qualifications you’re hoping for. While you may have some experience knowing what a good profile will look like, a recruiter will have an even better knowledge of what is a promising hire and who just looks good on paper.

They can also help you find people that will work for your specific workplace. If you have a lively, team-focused office, they will work to find someone with qualities that will fit in with that. Additionally, if you have lots of independent workers and thinkers, they can help find that too.

If you are hiring for a very competitive, highly-paid role, they often have connections to those people. Most established career people do not apply online or even keep track of job openings, so you could be missing out great people without a recruiter. On a similar note, hiring a recruiter that specializes in a specific area, like finance, engineering, or even college students, would be much better at identifying good candidates rather than an employee who may not work in that field.

Cons:

1. Costs extra money

Of course, when it comes to business, the most important factor is often money. Hiring a recruiter does cost money. You will have to pay them based on what their contract is, which can vary from company to company. If you are hiring for a general role and you feel someone in your company could do the job well, then hiring someone else could just be another expense that you don’t need.

If you are a start-up or small business, there may be little budget or no budget at all for hiring costs. In this case, you will probably have to give up the idea of using a recruiter.

As a small pro inside this con, most recruiters work on a commission-based system meaning that they aren’t paid unless they fill the position you want them to fill. At least this way, you know that you aren’t paying someone for work that may end up being fruitless. You have somewhat of a guarantee that their work will be successful.

2. Creates an extra step in the process

How every recruiter manages their candidates and their input from the company can depend largely on the situation. However, it is not uncommon for recruiters to check in with the company at each stage to make sure that they are producing candidates that are falling in line with what the company wants. Because of this, hiring a recruiter can create sometimes unnecessary steps for both candidates and companies.

For example, a candidate may send their resume to a recruiter who then forwards it to the company. They then have to wait for the company to respond to move forward. Then usually comes a series of interviews that go through both the recruiter and eventually the company itself. This extra step usually means that it takes more time to move from step to step. Sometimes this work can also be repetitive as a candidate waits for approval from not just one, but two parties.

Whether you’ve decided that a recruiting service is right for you, remember to stay positive when searching for great candidates. The right ones are always out there!

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