What is a Recruitment Agency?
A recruitment agency is a company whose main business is helping other companies hire staff. They are a sort of marketplace where employers and prospective employees are matched, with the agency being the matchmaker.
We can simply call them the middlemen between job seekers and labour employers. Employers send them details of roles they need to fill and a recruitment agency will look through their database for workers that can suitably fill the position.
Why Companies and Job Seekers Use Agencies
There are several reasons why companies and job seekers prefer to work with these agencies. The reasons will depend on which side of the divide each belongs.
Companies
Companies hire agencies to help them hire their staff for the following reasons:
Cost Saving – The cost of hiring can be quite high. To get an insight into this, read this article here. One way that many companies save cost is by hiring through an agency. This saves them a lot of costs, thus making this choice ideal for companies that do not have the financial capacity to have their own full-blown hiring unit under their HR department.
Faster Delivery Time – For many companies, this is a time saving and much faster option. Rather than having to spend time and money to advertise for the position, putting extra workload on the human resources department to sort through the many job applications, shortlisting the candidates that will be called for an interview, and going through the strenuous process of interviewing the shortlisted candidates to select the one or ones they need; all the company needs to do is to simply tell the agency what they need and the agency does what it needs to do to fill the position(s).
It certainly saves a lot of time and allows the company to focus on the actual business of running their core operations.
Expertise and Specialisation – The process of hiring requires some level of skill that is acquired and honed over years of experience. Many companies cannot afford to form an in-house hiring team with the level of skill and expertise that is required to handle the hiring process for best results. They, therefore, find it easier to just hire through an agency that has the necessary expertise.
In other cases, a company might require a highly specialised role for which they lack the necessary expertise to interview or even decide on the right candidate. Thus, for companies with such requirements, they would usually engage an agency that is specialised in hiring for such roles to ensure that only fully qualified candidates are selected.
Guarantees – Another cause why companies prefer hiring agencies is because of the guarantees that some of these agencies offer. A lot of top agencies will guarantee that the candidate they present will remain in that employment for at least a specific period. Otherwise, the agencies will refund what they were paid for the job or simply refill the position at their own cost.
Such a guarantee certainly gives employers a level of assurance. See more benefits here: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/benefits-staffing-agencies-11066.html.
Job Seekers
Free Assistance – Top agencies get paid by the company to fill positions so they do not charge applicants for the opportunity to consider them for the position. This means that the applicant will be receiving this assistance for free.
Access to More Employment Opportunities – A job seeker that is working with an agency will have access to more employment opportunities because the agency uses its network to receive information on roles that need to be filled in various organisations and matches these against the applicants they have. Qualified applicants can, therefore, be considered for more job opportunities than they would have on their own.
Inside Information on Job Opportunities – Agencies know when special skill sets are required by an organisation. With their inside information, they can not only help applicants get considered for these roles but can in some cases also help them prepare for the interview. Remember that it is in the agency’s best interest to fill the position.
Traits of Top Recruitment Agencies
There are critical traits you should look out for in identifying the top recruitment agencies in USA. These include:
Professionalism
The goal of a top agency is to fill a position with the best possible candidate. It goes about this in the most professional of ways that are not driven by selfishness or a need to simply collect the payment without care for the quality of work.
This shows in the process employed, the questions asked, and how the applicants are processed and treated.
Specialisation
Top agencies handle the process with specialised expertise. If the role to be filled is that of an IT specialist, the consultant handling the case will be an expert in that field so s/he will know what to look out for.
Operation Above-board
Reputable agencies will not do anything that is not above-board. These include charging and collecting fees from applicants, making extravagant promises, or falsifying applicant’s information just to ensure they land the job.
Guarantees
They can offer guarantees to employers and applicants that the position will be filled for at least a minimum period.
