Recruiting for an open position is a costly endeavor for any company, big or small, and not one that should be taken on lightly. From managing your listings on job boards to interviewing and vetting dozens of candidates, finding the right new hire is a full-time job with new expenses around every corner. The total loss a company takes during this process, known as “turnover cost” can take up to 15% of the position’s annual salary, even if the search only takes a few months.
Higher-level positions are also significantly more costly to fill. When a single mistake could cost you several thousand dollars in both money and time, it’s no wonder companies are turning to professional recruiters. Hiring a recruiting firm can streamline your hiring process, bring in higher quality candidates, and eliminate the risk of losses you can’t afford.
Filling a position quickly
The first way that a recruiting firm can save you money is by cleanly reducing the amount of time it takes to fill an open position. Whether you’re replacing someone who has moved on or filling a spot created by recent growth, the longer a position is empty, the more money you will lose by not having a worker in place creating value.
The position would not exist if your company didn’t need someone in place and more often than not, your senior leaders don’t have time to go hunting for candidates. A recruiting firm has a much higher chance of finding you the perfect candidate months earlier than you could on your own due to a combination of skill, technique, and an excellent network of contacts throughout multiple industries. Whatever you’re looking for, a professional recruiting firm can efficiently find someone to fit the bill.
Reducing the risks of extended short-staffing
If your open position has resulted in a short-staffing situation, the fast recruiting capabilities of a hiring firm can save you money in this realm as well. When existing employees are feeling the strain as they try to cover for a gaping hole in their team structure, mistakes can be made that will be difficult or expensive to fix. By working with a service that can find you high-quality candidates in record time, you can significantly reduce the risks of understaffing mistakes and the costs associated with them.
Shorter short-lists with access to excellent candidates
Often, the most qualified and valuable recruits are not among those who spend time applying for positions on job boards. Being capable, responsible, and talented means that they are much more likely to have a stable position and to not actively be looking for a job. These are known as “passive candidates” and tend to be of a much higher quality than the usual openly-available selection. A recruiting firm knows where these candidates can be found and how to sway them toward coming to work with you. When your recruiting firm brings in higher quality candidates that are readily available, this means your hiring manager spends less of their valuable time and resources considering less than perfect options.
Fast recruiting by pulling from a large network
Another benefit, especially if you need to fill a position immediately, is access to a recruiting firm’s vast collection of resumes and contacts. These have been collected over years of networking to become a truly massive resource with qualified candidates from almost every industry. Based on what you are looking for, it’s entirely possible that your recruiting firm could have the perfect candidate already waiting for their files and ready to get started right away. This massively reduces the costs of having your position open for months at a time waiting for good candidates and slowly working through the interview process with many of them.
Less time spent on preliminary interviews
For every position, there could easily be a few hundred local or relocation-friendly candidates with the right set of skills available. Each of them will need to first be assessed and vetted then interviewed with the needs of your company and the team they will be joining kept in mind. Let’s face it, you’re already dealing with one open position and your senior managers simply don’t have time to perform fifteen interviews a week, but your recruiting firm does.
Working with your hiring managers, your outsourced recruiters can begin their mission with the exact criteria you’d like met for each candidate brought back to you. They will take responsibility for performing initial interviews, running candidates through skill tests, and contacting references to get a complete picture of each candidate, saving you time and money on investigations and background checks. The hiring manager will only have to spend their time interviewing the elite shortlist of the candidates judged the best without all the others who didn’t meet the criteria at one or more crucial points.
Qualified candidates need less training
Among the compromises hiring companies tend to make, choosing candidates who still need training is one of the most costly. While it’s true that sometimes your favorite candidate has all the right qualifications except for the lack of some crucial skill, your ideal hire is someone who can hit the ground running straight out of their onboarding course. Usually, a talented recruiting firm can find you a complete shortlist of people who all are fully trained to start in the new position immediately rather than several weeks after they are hired. This saves you the expense of both scheduling the needed lessons and paying a new hire for the time it takes them to learn the needed skills while their intended position continues to sit empty.
Avoiding damage caused by deception
Recruiting firms can also help you identify and weed out candidates who present themselves well but don’t really have the skills they claim to. Being fooled by these candidates is often expensive because they not only will need to be trained or replaced, but functioning in a role above their capabilities can result in significant mistakes that your capable team members will have to spend their paid time cleaning up.
Good matches result in less turnover
It’s always painful to spend months and thousands of dollars seeking out, recruiting, and onboarding someone only to see them leave again in a few months or even a few years. Most companies hope that their new hires will become long-term loyal employees and invest in recruitment accordingly. When you put your trust in a dedicated recruiting firm, they will go out of their way to find you candidates who are much more likely to stay for the long-haul. This saves you all the time, hassle, and expenses of going through the recruitment process all over again when an imperfect fit moves on too early.
When you’re recruiting for an open position, naturally your company wants only the highest quality candidates even if you’re in a rush to complete your staff and return to your full productivity potential. Rather than sacrifice the time and energy of your valuable staff, leaving more than one job unfulfilled, a capable recruiting firm is always happy to pick up the slack. By outsourcing the majority of your hiring efforts, you ensure that your managers spend time interviewing and recruiting only the highest quality candidates from a hand-picked shortlist. Your hiring time will shorten, your turnover costs could be cut to a fraction of their potential expense, and you will soon find yourself with a candidate who has all the needed skills and is happy to become the newest member of your company.
For more information about the benefits of a recruiting firm or to fill a few open positions of your own, please contact us today!
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