‘I work in recruitment’ can often feel like a sentence you shouldn’t say. Rightly or wrongly, recruitment agencies often have a bad reputation. But why do businesses avoid recruitment agencies? And can the right recruitment consultancy actually be the answer to your current staffing challenges?

While we are obviously biased that a recruitment consultancy can add value, we can also understand the issues raised by SMEs. In our current survey, just over 40% of respondents are saying that they use a recruitment agency or consultant. Some of their reasons why include:

–        For roles we struggle with

–        Use different agencies depending on the role

For the 60% that don’t, one of their overwhelming reasons was:

–        Too expensive

Our survey is still open for you to share your thoughts at https://forms.gle/JMmAxwf4dRNMXdPJ6 and we’ll share wider thoughts after it has closed but for the moment we’ll address the above.

Recruitment agencies are too expensive?

This is a common phrase heard by all recruiters. And as recruitment agencies and consultancies tend to charge differently to other service providers on the surface it can seem justified. A quick Google highlights that, on average, recruitment agencies charge:

Average fee percentage charged by recruitment agencies in the UK in 2021 was around 18% of the first-year salary, According to data from the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC). (Source GoHire).

That can increase for hard-to-fill positions and see some agencies charge as high as 30% of a first-year salary.  This could be a cost to an SME of upwards of £7,500.

But how does that equate to managing the hiring process internally? While that is harder to analyse, research suggests that it costs businesses approx £30,000 to replace an employee. And that’s before you take into account the cost of the time it would take you to manage this internally.

As with every decision you make for your business, qualifying your choice of recruitment consultancy can pay dividends. Reviewing testimonials, types of roles they place, understanding your objectives alongside other criteria can help you analyse the return on investment.

You don’t get the results you want

We all know that recruitment is challenging for the UK right now. And there doesn’t seem to be much chance of this changing. SMEs are facing a range of issues when trying to recruit including:

–        Too many CVs

–        ‘Ghosting’ at interview

–        Candidates rejecting offers

–        Lack of soft and hard skills

A traditional recruitment agency may focus on supplying you with CVs and simply exacerbate the issue. This is where qualifying a recruitment agency, or consultancy like ourselves, before going ahead can change the results that you get.

Rather than send you CV after CV, we take the time to get to know your business and make sure we send you a selection of potential ‘good eggs’ rather than every CV we receive. Our advice is to qualify the recruitment consultancy that you work with to see their approach and the potential value they will return.

There are too many agencies: focus on a consultative approach instead

We’re also aware of the common phrase ‘no agencies please’. And, we also understand that this can be due to receiving cold calls telling you about the perfect candidate. If you’re experiencing that, then carefully selecting your recruitment agency, or instead focusing on a recruitment consultancy, can enable you to say  ‘no agencies please, we already work with a recruitment partner’.

Focus on choosing a recruitment consultancy that understands your values. Our approach is to focus on creating a partnership where we get to know your objectives as well as potential gaps in your future workforce.

At Good Egg Recruitment, we’re always happy to have a no-obligation, free of charge, initial chat where we get to understand each other and what you need from your recruitment partner. Email nicola@goodeggrecruitment.com or annette@goodeggrecruitment.com to get started.