The war for talents is forcing companies to act. The days of waiting for the ideal applicant are long gone. If their own competence does not lie in human resources, the companies often choose the path through a personnel agency. This can also be useful from an applicant’s point of view and noticeably shorten the often laborious application process.

What is a recruitment agency?

Until about 1994 it was the job of the Employment Agency alone to bring employers and potential candidates together for a vacant position. A lot has changed in the labor market since then. That calls the recruitment agency on the scene. Not least because of the low birth rate, the personnel situation is strained, and companies are finding it increasingly difficult to find sufficiently qualified workers. There is no telling that this trend will change – on the contrary, experts expect that 816,000 positions in the public sector alone will remain unfilled in 2030. This development could hit other industries, for example, craftsmanship, even harder.

Especially in small and medium-sized companies, human resources can only be rudimentary. You, therefore, outsource personnel recruitment to external parties and use a recruitment agency. It determines what is known as profiling the requirement profile of the position to be filled. In a specially managed applicant database, she compares this with the competence profile of potential candidates.

In addition, the recruitment agency also places job advertisements. Suitable channels for this would be print and social media or online job exchanges. In addition, many recruitment agencies are also active in job networks such as Xing or LinkedIn.

If a contract is concluded between the company and the applicant, the recruitment agency receives a commission. Your work is therefore similar to that of a (real estate) broker.

Personnel placement, personnel consulting, temporary employment, headhunters

With recruitment, terms such as headhunter or temporary employment are occasionally used. Despite some differences, they are often used interchangeably in common parlance because there is a lot of overlap. In fact, the transitions are fluid. A recruitment agency can also provide temporary employment and also employ headhunters.

The recruitment agency relies on job advertisements and applicants who are currently not in an employment relationship. As a rule, she works on a successful basis.

If a company wants to fill a higher position for which specific specialist knowledge and/or personnel responsibility is required, the search on the job market can be very difficult. For this purpose, HR consultants or Headhunters are used. They have a reputation for poaching employees from other companies. But that’s not always the case. Rather, headhunting is now a common term for direct contact with applicants by a personnel consultant.

The pay of the recruiter is also slightly different than that of the recruiting. A personnel consultant will charge a fee for the search alone, regardless of whether his or her work leads to success.

Temporary employment means the temporary employment of employees in a company. The duration of employment can, for example, be reduced to a specific project. The employee’s employment relationship does not exist between him and the client but continues to exist with the company that borrows him. Temporary employment can therefore be understood as a kind of “temporary staffing”.

Personnel placement: Also useful for applicants

Not only for companies but also for applicants, a recruitment agency like Randstad is interesting in order to shorten the application process. By no means only high positions are filled. A recruitment agency is usually set up on a broader basis and also offers graduates and young professionals good opportunities to start their careers.

Often, recruitment agencies are geared towards certain industries and accordingly include companies among their customers that applicants do not become aware of in their own search. In addition, they know the requirements in their areas exactly and can optimize application documents such as cover letters and résumés for their clients.

The consulting service of a recruitment agency can be very different, which is why both companies and applicants are encouraged to take a close look at the placement. In some cases, for example, intermediaries limit themselves to only a selection of companies to submit suitable candidates. Others are active during the entire application process, conduct job interviews and sometimes even organize assessment centers.

Recruiting: advantages and disadvantages

If you are considering hiring a recruiting agency, there are a few things you should think about because, like almost everything in life, it has several advantages and disadvantages. However, this applies to both sides: employee and employer.

Benefits for the employee

You save time

As an employee, you transmit your relevant data to the recruitment agency, which you then add to your applicant database. From this point on, almost everything happens by itself. The recruitment agency will correspond with companies on your behalf.

Success-based work in recruitment

A recruitment agency is success-oriented. That means: only if you are mediated can the mediator earn anything from you. So the incentive for employers to take place is great.

Networking the recruitment agency

As a rule, a recruitment agency is networked across several industries. This is also necessary to bring companies and applicants together. Larger recruitment agencies in particular have locations across the country. This way you can set regional priorities and prefer your desired working environment.

Profiling and Matching

If a recruitment agency is commissioned to recruit employees, the vacant position is first precisely profiled. You will only enter the candidate pool if your own profile matches the requirements ( Matching ). The likelihood that the position will harmonize with your interests and skills is therefore very high.

You benefit from inside knowledge

You can benefit from the inside knowledge of a recruitment agency. Since she is mostly geared towards specific industries, she knows the job pool in her areas very well. This may result in contacts that would have remained hidden from you if you had searched for it yourself.

Disadvantages for the employee

A selection process over which you have no control

As a rule, you can hardly influence whether and how you get into the candidate pool as an applicant. Most companies have very specific ideas about the requirements for applicants. In order not to endanger customer loyalty, the recruitment agency usually withholds them, even if they are very strict. You may be deprived of a job because there are only a few points that do not fit your profile.

Your skills are assessed by the recruiter and are therefore subjective. In the worst case, you will not be judged incorrectly with regard to certain properties.

You could play the decoy

You could also fall victim to the success-based remuneration of a recruitment agency. That would be the case if the personnel consultant wants to make a certain applicant attractive to a company and for this purpose draws in other – less suitable – applicants to the group of candidates. Most likely, said applicant will stand out against these candidates. If, on the other hand, you are one of the “decoys”, you will most likely be rejected.

Advantages for the employer

Less effort

If a company hires a recruiting agency, it bypasses a time-consuming and costly job search. This can be very useful, especially if HR does not have an independent department, because then there is a lack of expertise and resources, which the recruitment agency certainly has. But even large companies sometimes make use of a personnel consultant, especially for executive search.

Profiling and Matching

Of course, profiling is also in the employer’s interest. In this way, he can draw from a pre-selection of applicants who are exactly suitable for the vacancy. There is no need to sound out numerous applications from unsuitable candidates.

Temporary employment

If a company has only a temporary need for certain employees, it can acquire them in the course of the temporary employment. As soon as they are no longer needed, for example, because the respective project has ended or the order situation has normalized, the transfer can be discontinued. This can be done relatively unbureaucratically since no employment relationship is concluded between client and employee.

Disadvantages for employers

Lack of control

The outsourcing of recruiting is associated with a loss of control. Employers do not know beforehand which applicants will be proposed to them and accordingly have no influence on the selection process. Since no less than the question of which people will help shape their company in the future, many companies want transparency in their recruitment.

Seriousness

Neither the recruiter nor the personnel consultant is a protected job title. Sufficient qualifications and seriousness are therefore not guaranteed. The choice of a personnel agency should therefore also be made carefully on the part of the company.

Costs

Regardless of whether it is recruiting or personnel consulting, at the end of the application process there are costs for the consulting service that are based on the gross annual salary of the candidate. Rates of 20-30 percent are common. If the position is in management, the fee can exceed the 30 percent mark.

Conclusion

Since the recruitment agency can accelerate the application process and possibly open the boundaries to previously unknown companies, it can also be useful for your application. However, if you are considering this option, you should take a closer look when choosing the mediator you want. It is best to find out in advance about the sectors being looked after, the way of working and any costs that may arise