Finding new employees is an essential and costly process for any organisation and many businesses do not have the tools, the time to screen, shortlist, and interview extensive lists of would-be next hires or the candidate contacts that have been built up over years of searching. This article sheds light on the work that recruiters do to warrant their fees and dispel the myth that recruiters make money from old rope.  

The cost to use a professional recruiter will range between 15% to 20% of a candidate’s starting salary. This might sound expensive, but they essentially work for you for nothing regardless of whether the vacancy is filled or not. So, it’s in the recruiters interest to make sure they get it right, because if they don’t they do not get paid. Similarly, in the instances where an introduction converts to a placement, the recruiter will normally refund you all or part of your fee if something goes wrong. 

How much do good recruiters get paid? 
Employing a dedicated recruiter with the expertise and experience necessary for effective talent attraction can cost between £35,000 and £60,000 per year, a substantial financial investment for any business. By outsourcing the work to a professional recruiter, you are effectively offsetting those costs for an ad-hoc fee structure which you can switch on and off as and when you like, mitigating the cost of employing an internal recruiter yourself. 

How much time do recruiters spend searching for candidates? 
This is dependent on the complexity of the role which is why fees can vary as well. With a few exceptions, a run-of-the-mill role will take less time to fill than a specialist one, but if a recruiter is on a commission-based package they will want to make sure they source the best people for the job, so in short…hours and hours of time is spent scouring in-house candidate databases, premium job boards and social media. From time to time they might get lucky and land a candidate on the first cast, but like fishing, you don’t always catch something every time. 

From an in-house perspective, these costs combined with the time required to search and select potential new employees can substantially impact a business's productivity, not to mention the sometimes lengthy timelines involved in getting a new employee onboard. Outsourcing this to a professional recruiter can significantly speed up this process, eliminate the need for individual sourcing, and take care of all the pre-engagement onboarding including contract negotiation and referencing. 

Screening countless unsuitable advert responses
It’s easy to post a job advert but the time it takes to sift through dozens of applications to find a few golden nuggets can be considerable, and unlike searching you don’t have control over who is applying, and the majority of the applications may be unsuitable. Even when you do find that golden nugget people rarely answer the phone these days or respond to emails and texts from numbers they don’t recognise, taking more time to either try-try again or start over from scratch.  

A professional recruiter will put the time in and streamline the process by doing all the pre-screening and the callbacks, introducing the most qualified and the most suitable applicants to the end hirer, saving time and speeding up the process. 

First stage interviews
These are essential to establish a candidate's skill set and to get a feel on how their values align with your company culture. The rule of thumb is that a good recruiter will present a handful of short-listed candidates who have been screened, assessed, interviewed, and briefed on the vacancy including the business they are being introduced to, saving valuable time for the hiring manager allowing them to focus on a shortlisted talent pool. 

Simplifying the interview process
Often decision-making can involve multiple stakeholders required to provide input during the selection and interview process. This coordination can be a challenge, resulting in delays and loss of key talent to competitors. 

A professional recruiter will streamline and speed up that process by managing the candidate journey with the coordination of interviews and post-interview feedback, leading to a faster and more decisive outcome mitigating the risk of losing key talent to a competitor or risking a bad review on sites like Google or Glassdoor.

Going back to the drawing board
When the interview process is not well-managed or the decision-making process takes too long candidates will be put off and go elsewhere, resulting in the need to restart the recruitment process again from scratch.  

A professional recruiter will manage the process from start to finish keeping candidates engaged and hiring managers informed, minimising the risk of losing out on the best candidates in the talent pool. 

The cost of a bad hire
Good recruitment is a challenge in any industry and there is little doubt that all businesses have made a bad hire somewhere along the line. A bad hire is bad for business. The hidden costs associated with onboarding, in-house training, productivity, and contractual implications can also affect team morale which will have a direct impact on productivity and output. It can take up to six months to fully integrate a new recruit into a business which will equate to thousands of pounds of money down the drain if things don’t work out. 

When you factor this into your recruitment budget you will be surprised how the costs can stack up. But it doesn’t just stop there, the cost of a bad hire can be up to three times their salary. Improving the candidate journey will greatly improve the probability of attracting and securing the right people who stay in the business for the long term, So, it makes sense to get it right the first time around.  

Understand what you are getting for your money
A good recruiter will want to meet with you virtually or in person to get a feel for your work culture and gain a real understanding of what it is you do. They will fly the flag of your organisation and will be fully committed to finding the right person fit to fill your vacancy, and they should always keep you informed along the way. 

You should feel like you are getting value for money, so don’t be afraid to ask what it is they will be doing for you. Your investment will probably include advertising, which you should approve before it is posted on the net. Timescales are also important; a good recruiter will manage your expectations and agree ones that are workable. In most cases initial introductions will filter through quite quickly but a thorough recruitment campaign could be ongoing for a number of weeks. 

A good recruiter will keep you informed, and they will tell you when things are not going to plan so you can make informed decisions based on real findings. They should also meet with potential candidates before they are introduced,  after all you paying for a service and you should expect that your next best hire will have been properly vetted. 

Don’t agree to binding exclusivity. Recruitment is like a roller coaster and candidates can let you down, so it’s best not to be left with no one else to turn to if the river runs dry. At the same time don’t saturate and put your job out to as many recruiters as you can find on a Google search. As soon as they get wind of this, efforts will be put elsewhere. 

Lastly…when a recruiter truly understands your business and you the hirer value the recruiter's time, they will work tirelessly for you, like having your own flexible in-house team but without the wage bill! A good recruiter will challenge you and advise you, so you can shape your business with the fluctuation of the employment market. But…it is also a two-way street…the work done by the recruiter will go to waste if the hiring manager does not act quickly, review introductions, and communicate with constructive feedback, good candidates don’t hang around for long. When the two-way street becomes one-way it’s likely that the recruiter will not want to work with that hiring manager again, so invest time into your recruiter and they will invest their time in you for years to come. 

Getting the experts in 
Since we started out in 2004 we have seen countless changes to our industry with web optimisation, SEO, PPC, job boards, CRMs, aggregation software, social media, and AI. 

The world of recruitment is a very different to the one that existed twenty years ago. Technology dominates the horizon and recruiters have invested heavily in state-of-the-art search technology giving the ability to reach out to talent that normal advertising cannot find.

But, although technology is essential at each of the spectrum there is a candidate and a hirer, and the need tie it all together, bringing a third party into the process; the recruiter.