How much is your time worth?

Posted on 8 Oct 2020
How much is your time worth?
One of the main reasons that companies choose to manage their recruitment in-house and not use an agency falls to cost. The recruitment industry is huge and was born out of a need and that need has not gone away, though the cost of using an agency is often seen as prohibitive.

But is it really?

A recruitment process takes time, time we’re paid for which is commensurate with the effort put in. Margins in recruitment businesses are usually reasonable, we’re not charging onerously, far from it.

A recruitment agency brings experience, skill and a raft of contacts to the table. Yes, there are some poorly executed, unscrupulous agencies out there. You may have been stung in the past and ‘won’t go there again’, but not every recruitment business is like that.  I’ve got over 30 years of experience under my belt and have run several successful recruitment companies in that time. I wouldn’t have achieved that had I been one of the ‘bad ones’.

So back to my point. The cost of using an agency is often seen as prohibitive.

The average job is attracting a typical 250 CVs at the moment due to the rising unemployment and general downturn in business we’re experiencing, as a result of the ongoing pandemic.

Even if you spent only 5 minutes per CV reviewing it, that adds up to over 20 hours of your time, or someone in your organisation’s time. How much is that worth to you? I proffer that it is worth a great deal. That’s 20 hours of you not doing your normal day job, 20 hours of someone else not focusing on their main responsibilities at work.

That is where a recruitment agency is a benefit. We partner with you and do that work for you. Using our skill and experience, we do the sifting, delivering to you the best of the set, ready to embark on the next stage of your recruitment process. Here’s an added bonus; We also telephone or video interview each and every single candidate before putting them forward to you. Did you know that? So, when we submit a CV to you, you know that it is worth looking at, you know that it’s been screened by us, you know you’re not wasting your time.

Think of a recruitment agency as an extension of your team. Rather than increasing heads in your HR department (or piling on additional pressure to an existing team) to cope with the influx of interest from candidates, you’re hiring us on a temporary basis while you have a need. Outsourcing is a method for businesses to be more productive whilst sensibly managing their overhead.

No Recruitment Agencies”

Why?

  • Why limit your pool of opportunity?
  • Why increase your workload? Haven’t you got enough to do?
  • Why refuse professional partnering?
Because of the pandemic and it’s effects on our economy, candidates - really good candidates are unemployed. Where do you think they turn to first? To recruitment agencies. Yes, they will scour job boards, yes, they’ll be all over LinkedIn and who would blame them. But in their list of things to do to get themselves out of the situation is to check in with an agency. They know this is the way of the world, they know that in the past this is what was done. What is frustrating for them is that less jobs are being advertised through agencies with more companies taking a DIY approach and so their opportunity to find new and suitable job roles are diminished as a result.

This is a lose-lose scenario.

Candidates don’t always get to find out about the many job roles that are on offer.
Companies don’t get access to a refined pool of pre-vetted, screened talent.

We’re in this together

This is a term that has been used a lot of late, and it rings true for the relationship between recruitment agencies and business.

I care passionately about what is happening out there in the business world. It’s absolutely heart-breaking to witness.

I face a daily deluge of candidates who are struggling to find work or finding themselves on the job market for the first time in years, not knowing which way to turn. I want to help them, it’s part of who I am and part of the reason why after 30 years, I’m still committed to what I do.

So please, don’t shut the agencies out. We provide a hugely valuable service to business and to candidates. By working together, we can progress faster, deliver better results and above all help people get back into work.

Please don’t hesitate to call me 07974 429217 or email me [email protected] to chat about any potential roles you have coming up or to discuss what the current employment marketplace is looking like.
 
Helen.