Should Your Company Use a Job Agency?

In an age of mass resignations and employees switching places of employment by the thousands on a daily basis, finding and keeping the talent your organization needs can be a real burden. Competitive pay and benefits only go so far, and you might feel that you need professional help with your recruitment efforts. Should your company use a job agency?

Where Employees Connect With Demand

A job agency in an area like Manhattan is where those looking for work wind up connecting with companies looking for great talent. Organizations turn to job agencies for their staffing needs so that dedicated and experienced recruiters find the talent they need. Not only do they trust job agencies to fill their hiring quotas but they also rely on them to screen potential professionals for those who are experienced and qualified in the kinds of work that need to be done. This happens in sectors ranging from information technology to legal offices.

Pros of Using a Job Agency

Staffing agencies have their pros and cons. You should know both before choosing to use one for your own company:

• Access Recruiter Talent: Being able to recruit the right candidates to a position or company is a professional skill of its own. Having access to it should improve the quality of candidates you get, but hiring recruiters of your own might not be a good idea. You’d have to cover full-time benefits and salary. Outsourcing recruitment means you can access the skills but only when you need them.
• Fill Positions Faster: Effective job agencies already do networking all the time and have a deep pool of contacts to pull from when you have an opening. They might have a few people in mind the minute you call or message them about finding the right professionals.
• Try-Outs: Depending on the position you hire for, you might use a recruit from a job agency on a temp contract first before offering them the full-time position. In doing so, you can find out if they are who you are really looking for permanently. This actually works out well for them, too, since they have a chance to see if they like your company culture before committing to joining it long-term.
• Simplified Onboarding: Most job agencies will handle certain things with a prospect in advance of them ever dealing with your Human Resources department. They might show up with their tax and identity documentation ready to go so you get them into your benefits and payroll quickly and with ease.

Cons of Using a Job Agency

Job agencies can have some downsides, although effective communication can prevent a lot of these:

• Not Getting What You’re Looking For: If you’re looking for professionals who are truly specialized in what they do, a job agency might not have a deep pool of talent to pull from when offering you potential candidates.
• Failing to Understand Your Needs: Industry jargon can be an issue at times. For example, if you have a mid-level manager looking for project managers to report to them, you might tell a job agency that. However, if they run ‘project manager’ as a keyword search in their database, they might pull up project managers from print shops that have the same title but aren’t at all related.
• Substandard Recruitment Processes: Not every job agency is as concerned with the quality of their candidates so much as the headcount. This is especially true if all they do is fill the quotas for temp projects and don’t handle professional recruitment of full-timers as well.

Test the Waters

Many job agencies will sit down for a complimentary consultation with first-time clients so you can get to know them and what they can do for you before you actually sign a contract. For that matter, you can also negotiate the size, scale, and duration of a contract, which means you can try such services out a little without committing to them so you have time to decide if this is how you should proceed.