Choose the Right Recruitment Consultant for Your Needs

Good recruitment planning reduces costs and improves efficiency.

A recruitment consultant is often considered when recruitment efforts do not result in successful hires. Recruitment problems can be caused by many things, but a typical feature of difficult recruitment is that companies are looking for an experienced professional. Other companies are also interested in them, so they are usually already employed. If the result is not very good, despite the best efforts of the HR department, a recruitment consultant can be used. But managing single recruitment with a consultant is expensive, and the same problems will soon arise with the next recruitment. 

Typical Recruitment Problems:

• Difficulties in finding the right talent
• Finding the right people to apply for a job
• Failure to find suitable applicants
• A low number of applications does not lead to successful recruitment
• Process delayed due to lack of suitable candidates
• The vacancy has to be filled due to urgency

Choosing a Recruitment Consultant – What Are Your Options?

Recruitment consultancy can include anything from coaching to direct search. The first step is to understand your needs in order to choose the right recruitment consultant for you. For example, for fast-track recruitment needs where budget is not an issue, temporary staff can be used. If the company's recruitment needs are of a permanent nature, a consultant should be chosen to correct the internal recruitment process and thus enable the company to recruit independently in the future. The problem is that using a recruitment consultant often does not fix the internal recruitment process, but only solves the individual recruitment need, i.e. the problem is only temporarily fixed. When the next recruitment need arises, you are back to square one. This is costly for companies. 

There are at least as many recruitments need as there are different recruitment services. It is therefore important to choose the right recruitment consultancy for the situation at hand. But what are the different types of recruitment consultants and which one is right for your needs? 

1. Different types of recruitment consultants: 
2.  
3. Recruitment trainers
4. Headhunters
5. Staff leasing agencies
6. Job boards
7. Recruitment software providers
8. Digital headhunters

The recruitment consultant should fix the internal processes of the company so that it can successfully recruit itself in the future. 

#1 Recruitment Trainers

Recruitment trainers share insights based on experience and potential tools to help recruiters. A recruitment trainer is a low-threshold introduction to recruitment development. They do not directly help with resource constraints and the reliability and functionality of the tools cannot be guaranteed. Recruitment trainers are often priced on an hourly basis, leaving the responsibility for the success of the hire to the employer. The results are therefore still dependent on the company's own recruitment performance. 

#2 Headhunters

Headhunters handpick suitable talent candidates for a position. They increase recruitment resources and speed up the process. Headhunters are typically used for hiring senior management, as using headhunters for individual recruitments is expensive. Headhunters solve the recruitment challenge on a hiring-by-hiring basis but do not develop internal processes, which means that the problems inherent in the recruitment process itself do not disappear and the need for headhunters remains.

#3 Staff leasing agencies

Staff leasing agencies are a convenient solution for temporary work needs or situations requiring specific expertise on a project basis. Labour sourced through leasing agencies may not be the same as an employee committed to in-house customs and shared long-term goals. The best talent is not usually found on the agency's roster. The employer is not contractually bound to the worker but gets a solution to a quick need. This allows temporary labor to be filled or specific expertise to be bought in for a short period of time.

#4 Job boards

Job boards provide employers with visibility for their job advertisements from active job seekers in different sectors. In the case of job boards, it is important to remember that only people looking for a new job are on job boards, so if you know that the majority of the people who are suitable for the position you are looking for are already employed, your advertisement will not be seen by the right target group. In addition, job portals expose you to competing for candidates; similar job advertisements from other companies will also appear in your advertisement, meaning that you may end up paying your competitor with a more attractive brand for an employee with your advertisement. Job boards often operate for positions that are in high demand in the labor market.

#5 Recruitment software providers

Modern recruitment systems save time and make it easier to manage the recruitment process. Often there are also built-in integrations for the distribution of advertisements, making distribution easy from a single location. The challenge is that the recruitment process is not considered on a company-by-company basis. Recruitment system providers should therefore also offer personalized consultancy as an additional service in order to achieve successful hiring, especially for hard-to-fill positions.

#6 Digital headhunting

Digital Headhunting is a modern concept that combines a headhunter, a recruitment system, and a recruitment marketing house. The digital nature of the service provides an affordable way to attract candidates to even the most challenging positions and make successful hires. The solution relies on a candidate-driven recruitment process, enabling high volumes of candidates. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the recruitment system is built for fast candidate processing. The service is not free, but only a fraction of the cost of a traditional headhunter.

How Do I Choose the Right Provider?

Recruitment planning should be done holistically, step by step, starting with the industry, regional location, and availability of labor. The key question is whether the company is positioned in an employer-driven or candidate-driven market. In an employer-driven market, there is a large pool of candidates available in the labor market to fill an open position. In contrast, in a candidate-driven market, there is no shortage of available labor. When choosing a recruitment consultant, it is, therefore, worth being aware of the type of labor market in which recruitment takes place.

For example, in a sector where there are usually many job applications, job boards can be used to distribute job advertisements, provided that competition for talent from other employers is not an obstacle. It is also worth using a recruitment system to distribute advertisements and manage applicants. For jobs where there are usually not enough candidates, modern digital headhunting services are preferable, as they often produce many times more candidates than other methods. However, the most important thing is to measure what you are doing, so make sure that your chosen provider also offers accurate analytics on the results, for example. Without concrete information on the performance of the steps, it is not possible to develop the activity or even to know from which channels the candidates came.

Recruitment Costs - What Costs Money, What Brings Real Savings?

Companies have varying levels of resources available to cover the costs of recruitment. In many companies, it is also difficult to know the real budget for recruitment, as recruitment is often not someone's main task and time spent on recruitment is taken away from other work. The time or information needed to develop recruitment may not be readily available, and not just any method may be applicable to any recruitment. When considering a recruitment consultant, it is worth assessing the overall costs. The key is to identify whether you are looking for a solution to a short-term or longer-term phenomenon. 

For individual recruitments, expensive headhunting services can be useful if there is an immediate shortage of staff, a one-off recruitment need, and a high demand for the position to be filled. If the need is long-term, the cost of recruiting through headhunting can be huge in the long term. In such cases, it would be advisable to use alternative services that deliver the same results but save huge costs in the long run, such as digital headhunting services, which, thanks to their cost-effective structure, are suitable for both smaller and larger companies for a variety of recruitment needs. 

The optimal situation for keeping recruitment costs within reasonable limits would be for companies to be able to recruit through their own effective processes and to manage their recruitment in a planned rather than a reactive way to an acute need. This makes it more likely to be able to select a person who is better suited to the role and the culture of the company. 

Measuring the Problem Areas

Once you've chosen a recruitment consultant, make sure you get accurate analytics on the results you achieve. Often, results such as impressions and various click-through rates are offered, but these do not guarantee successful recruitments. Rather, track the number of quality candidates, as this is more likely to lead to a successful hire. The number of quality candidates combined with reasonable costs is usually the best indicator that the recruitment consultant (in basic form) has been successful.