Using A Recruiter Vs. Hiring Yourself - The Pros and Cons

When companies are looking to take on a new staff member, they usually have to decide whether to use a recruiter or hire themselves.

Both are effective methods of getting good and productive people to help steer the company towards its ultimate goals.

However, they also both have advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses.

Let’s have an example. Say FNB is looking to fill a position.

The company can choose to advertise the available work position in various media streams and invite people to send in their resumes and applications to their hiring managers or Human resource manager or use a recruiter to handle the process right from interviews to salary negotiations and hiring.

The former sounds more effective and guarantees company involvement in hiring its workers, while the latter sounds more straightforward and faster.

So both methods are functional and can be used; however, they both have serious downsides.

In this article, we delve into the pros and cons of either option. 

Using a recruiter

When the need to hire new staff arises, many businesses and companies execute the search sourcing for feasible candidates themselves.

Many companies want to tread carefully and get fully involved in choosing people to fill the available positions.

It is also because they are reluctant to hire and pay for a recruiting firm.

However, companies should consider using recruiters for the following advantages.

Time-saving and faster hiring.

Using a recruitment agency means companies and businesses will take less time to hire or fill open job vacancies.

Companies that use recruiters don't have to endure the hassle or bother of advertising a vacancy, attracting applicants, and revising the different profiles and applications in search of the most qualified.

When companies use a recruiter, it's the recruiter's responsibility to do all this and only deliver the top candidates to the company for consideration.

However, recruiters are also more likely to find qualified candidates faster than a company's hiring manager.

This is because recruiters, especially those in the business, have a significant and vast skills network. They also usually have a big talent pool of already vetted candidates. It is, therefore, a faster way of hiring.

Guaranteed high-quality candidates

When companies use recruitment agencies, they access the talent and skill pool mentioned earlier.

These pools always have skilled and top-quality candidates that are prescreened and referenced.

This means companies hiring will only deal with thoroughly vetted and assessed candidates.

These agencies are also usually experts in selecting candidates since they are trained to do so.

 

Access to specialist knowledge

Recruiting agencies usually have vast specialist knowledge that in-house hiring managers do not possess.

In addition, many of these agencies specialize in recruiting for a specific level, industry, or role.

This means they have more profound insight into the targeted job market sections.

Because of this, recruiting agencies offer valuable advice to find and hire better candidates.

 

Temporary recruitment

It is relatively harder to hire temporary workers using in-house hiring managers.

Recruitment agencies, however, offer the service of temporary recruitment because they have a large pool of candidates to select from.

While the points mentioned above make using a recruiter sound desirable and the better option for hiring, there are some downsides.

Explained below are some of the disadvantages of using a recruiter.

No cultural fit

Most recruitment agencies might be good at vetting, selecting, and fronting the best-suited candidates for the available roles, but they lack skills in assessing a cultural fit.

This means that the agency will help choose a candidate best suited for the functional role but not suited for the company's culture.

Some agencies take the extra step of acquitting themselves with the company's culture before vetting candidates.

They are briefed about the goals and missions of the company before revising candidate profiles and handling interviews.

This is, however, a rare occurrence. Generally, the company should hire personally if they are looking for a candidate representing their culture and goals.

Lack of employer branding

Companies and businesses that use recruiting agencies can easily miss out on the opportunity to build their company branding strategy during the hiring process.

This is because the company surrenders its option to control its brand since the agency is doing all the work and the company is a secondary receiver.

Costly

The biggest hindrance to using a recruitment agency is its cost.

They usually charge between 15 and 25% in contingent recruitment and up to 33% in executive search of the prospective employee's annual salary.

But, of course, this price can go higher if the role is hard to fill.

This cost needs to be put in perspective in relation to the following considerations for the business:

What is the implication if the role is not filled within a certain time?

The amount of time that the recruiters should be saving the business in lessening the amount of time taken to do searches and interviews by the management of the business

Their ability to find the best talent in the market place giving the business a higher probability of finding great people for their business.

 

Hiring staff yourself

Below are some of the advantages of companies hiring staff themselves or internal recruitment.

Takes less time

Using recruiters is many times a tedious process that takes a while.

This entails finding candidates through sourcing and job advertising, evaluating them, and eventually persuading them to join. In addition, it is a long process because it involves a third party.

Cheaper

As earlier mentioned, recruitment agencies are costly.

Therefore, companies that hire staff themselves save a load of money because they don't have to pay for these services.

Consequently, it is advisable for small startups that don't have a lot to hire staff to opt for this method when looking to add to their team.

The caveat to this is there is a cost if they have an internal recruitment team and the cost of that team is then permanent cost to the business and if the role is not filled quickly, then what is the implication to the business.

More robust employee engagement (cultural fit)

Companies that hire their staff have the opportunity to engage personally with their prospective employees.

This means they can directly brief these employees about their company's culture, goals, and missions.

Here are some disadvantages of hiring in-house.

Limited network

As mentioned earlier, recruiting agencies have a wider talent pool and are usually correctly networked.

Companies that don't use these agencies can't access this already established network.

Therefore, they put themselves at risk of being underexposed, thereby overrating the few candidates they can access.

Limited expertise

Internal recruiters are often required to work lots of different opportunities across different skill sets and it is difficult to build their knowledge in a short space of time to source or understand where to find the best talent. Their focus is split across different sectors and they do not have the same amount of time to spend on each position as an external recruiter who specializes in specific sectors.

This is also related to the talent pool attached to recruitment agencies.

As stated earlier, these agencies are exposed and therefore know the professional and most qualified people for the available positions.

Therefore, companies that do not use these agencies deny themselves access to this pool