Written by

Frank Aneke

Cons of Hiring Recruitment Firm:

Brief Overview: Recruiting and retaining top performing talents are fundamentally important for the growth and success of any business. To actualise this critical business objective, many employers directly hire employees through advertising new positions on job boards while others contract the services of recruitment agencies to scout and hire talents for their business. 

In the last three editions of this blog, we examined the pros and cons of advertising on job boards and evaluated the pros of hiring with recruitment firms.  In this edition, we are going to review the cons of hiring recruitment agency.

Here are 12 Cons of Hiring Recruitment Firm:

• Recruitment firms are more expensive in most cases as they charge agreed commission per hire based on employee’s annual salary.

• When using a recruitment firm, some employers may not have as much say in the selection process as they would if they were handling the process themselves.

• Some recruitment firms rely on vetted-candidates and may not have access to all the available candidates in a particular industry or field. This could significantly limit the pool of potential candidates and may result in a less qualified hire.

• With recruitment firms, some employers might find it challenging to select the right-fit recruitment agency to use for their talent search.

• In a bid to make quick money, some recruitment firms do not bother to learn about employer’s workplace culture and in such situation not able to source the right-fit talent.

• A number of recruitment agencies recycle same job description for multiple clients and limit reflection of unique attributes of each client in their job postings.

• Some recruitment agencies charge lower fees to attract clients and offer poor quality service afterwards.  

• Using recruitment agencies, many employers are not sure of what to expect as there are no set standards on how candidates search is conducted. This leaves employers with different experience and varied outcome with each agency contracted.

• Some recruitment firms submit the first candidate they can find without in-depth search and hinder the prospects of finding better candidates in a wider search.

• With recruitment firms, hiring for culture fit could become challenging if the recruiters did not familiarise themselves with the employer’s business culture.

• Finding a specialist recruitment firm for a niche market or high-profile role can be time-consuming.

• When using a recruitment agency, some employers are bombard with multiple resumes indirectly shifting the candidates search back to the employer.  

Despite the cons of hiring with recruitment agencies, majority of recruitment firms consistently help their clients recruit high performing talents their competition may never attract with advertising on job boards. Having said that, advertising on job boards still accounts for over 70% of employment in Australia. Thanks for reading my blog.

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In the next edition, we will conclude the 5-part series with the topic: “Which One To Choose?” Watch This Space!!!