Hiring employees is usually not an easy nor quick process. In addition, hiring the wrong candidate can be a very expensive and time wasting event, so as a business you want to make sure you hire the best possible candidate for the job. This makes the recruitment process a truly important but very time-consuming process. It´s not just the final interview to choose the perfect candidate, it´s publishing the vacancy, screening resumes and applications, having a proper interview process, letting the candidates know about your decision on their candidacy and the list can go on and on. Finding the right employee, especially for business-critical positions, can eat up a lot of time, energy and effort of the team. Time, energy and effort that could also be spent on activities to keep your business working.
So as a business owner, why should you consider using a recruitment agency to help you in this cumbersome process of hiring for business critical positions?
- Time
As mentioned above, time might be the biggest advantage of getting some help of a recruitment specialist for hiring. Your time is worth money, and the best use of your time is to focus it on activities that help your business move forward. Unless you´re a recruiting agency yourself, your expertise is something else so your time and your team´s time is best spent on those activities that you do best and these also happen to have a direct impact on business results.
- Recruitment Expertise
Another key benefit is the recruitment expertise that these agencies bring. You´re not an expert recruiter so your selection process might have some flaws that could be easily avoided (thereby reducing the risk of hiring mistakes) when a specialist manages this process. The deep knowledge and experience that these agencies have in screening applications and in interviewing is invaluable when it comes to your business-critical positions. 
- Reach
Recruitment agencies have a large database full of skilled candidates and have immediate access to key recruitment platforms. Hence, a recruitment agency can reach many more potential candidates than an individual company can. A larger pipeline probably also means a bigger chance of finding your perfect candidate for the business critical position that you´re hiring for.
- Knowledge of the Market
In addition to time, expertise and reach, another significant advantage of using a recruitment agency is the knowledge they have of the market. They will be able to tell you what is happening in a specific specialist market, what the latest developments are, what the available talent in that niche is and what their salary- and career expectations might be. So a recruitment agency will really be able to tell you what is happening for a specific segment you would like to hire in.
- Access to key strategic skills on short notice
Recruitment agencies are also great for finding key strategic skills for temporary projects or on very short notice. For some projects, you might need to bring in qualified, experienced support in a very short time frame. A recruitment agency can help you finding flexible solutions for temporary needs.
So in summary, recruitment agencies can be of great value when you are hiring for business critical positions because of the time you will save, their expertise in recruiting, their reach to a great candidate pool, their knowledge of the market and the insights they will be able to give you, and their ability to provide you with key, strategic skills on short notice. And as for budget, think of it this way, making the wrong hiring decision is much more expensive than investing in a good process to find your new hire, especially when we´re talking about business-critical positions. It might be worth investing in getting some experienced help and save your own time for the activities that really matter to keep your business going.
Did you ever work with a recruitment agency? How was your experience?
