In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, many companies are turning to the expertise of a recruitment agency to help them find quality candidates in a saturated job market. Particularly within the technology industry, jobs in software development, UX design, data analysis, cybersecurity, and many other subfields continue to be in high demand.
That demand is expected to grow by 11% over the next decade, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
At the same time, the talent pool for these highly specialized fields is limited, allowing the best candidates to be extremely selective about the positions they apply for and accept. Added to this mix are the non-traditional candidates flooding the job market as a result of nation-wide redundancies within the UK IT and business sectors. With these challenges in mind, a recruitment agency may be the only viable solution for many businesses seeking an effective hiring strategy.
For some, however, working with a recruitment agency is a new and uncertain prospect. You may wonder what a recruitment agency can offer that your own, in-house HR team cannot. You may also be wondering whether a recruitment agency will yield a good ROI.
In this article, we discuss the reasons why working with a specialist recruitment agency represents the best solution to today’s challenging tech recruitment environment.
Specialist Expertise in a Recruitment Agency
A key benefit of working with a recruitment agency is access to recruitment specialists who are experts in a specific field. For the tech industry, in particular, this can be an invaluable asset when it comes to streamlining the hiring process. Imagine you need to hire a new software developer. It’s likely that your HR team are great at HR but have very little practical knowledge of coding. How can they identify prime candidates, draft an effective job description, and sift the wheat from the chaff of applicants? The answer is that your existing specialists will have to get involved, reviewing job ad copy, applications, interview questions, and so on. The result is double the work and double the expenditure in time, effort, and resources.
A specialist recruitment agency can cut down on this doubling up and maximize efficiency by providing both industry expertise and recruitment know-how in one tidy package. Specialist recruitment experts can help you craft a compensation package for industry competitiveness, research market trends to help shape realistic hiring expectations, and hand-pick the perfect candidate pool using a carefully crafted recruitment strategy. They put in the hard work and time so that you can concentrate on running your business.
Well-Developed Networks
Hiring the perfect candidate is in many ways very similar to building the perfect product-market: it is as much about your marketing strategy as it is about recruitment. Research published by LinkedIn suggests that while only 12% of working individuals are actively looking for a new position, as many as 85% may be passively interested in new opportunities. The best candidates, in other words, are not necessarily the ones trawling the job boards and job board adverts; they are sitting tight in secure, well-paid positions with your competitors.
To attract the best candidates, you need to market your organization, the role itself, and the compensation package in a way that targets candidates who are not already actively seeking you out. A recruitment agency with specialist industry knowledge will have the connections and contacts already in place to reach the best candidates and make sure they are aware of your job search. They also have the marketing expertise needed to “sell” your opening to the right candidates.
Targeted Recruitment Strategy
In a saturated job market, top candidates are selective about the positions they apply for; many may be unwilling to leave a currently secure post for a new one in these times of heightened uncertainty. Accessing these high-quality candidates takes not only time but also strategy. Specialist recruitment agents keep abreast of the forces shaping the current job market and can tailor the hiring process with both your organization’s needs and the wider industry picture in mind. They can advise on whether this is a good time to be headhunting or targeting upcoming graduates, hiring internally or looking to foreign hiring markets, focusing on flexible working arrangements rather than salary, and so forth.
Most importantly, a dedicated recruitment agency has the hiring know-how to craft a targeted recruitment strategy with your specific business plan and organizational culture in mind. Recruitment experts are highly trained to write compelling job posts, trawl the right candidate pools, recommend compensation packages and working arrangements that meet the latest expectations of top candidates and use marketing tools to broadcast your post widely.
Reputation for Professionalism
One final benefit is the sense of security that candidates feel when working with a professional recruitment agency. Remember, the recruitment process—from reading the job ad to arranging interview travel and submitting documents—may well be a candidate’s first experience of your organization. Making sure that that experience is efficient, pleasant, and positive can go a long way to attracting and retaining the interest of quality candidates. Tailored, professional, and friendly recruitment agencies, like Redimeer, attract this high caliber of candidate.
The bottom line is that working with a specialist recruitment agency will not only save you time, effort, and money in the long term but will also guarantee you a more targeted job search and ultimately a stronger long-term hiring strategy. Working with an agency will enable you to obtain not just a good new hire, but the perfect, long-term employee.