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Recruitment Agencies as Workforce Planners and their Impact on Job Seekers and Companies’ Growth Strategies

Recruitment is the modus operandi of engaging, screening and recruiting a knowledgeable, capable and competent person for a job at a company or for a vacancy in a volunteer-based organization. In today’s ever-changing and dynamic business environment, and the constant need for manpower, the role of professional recruitment agencies in assuming the outsourced functions of the work of human resource departments of mid- and large-size organizations is becoming more and more important. Recruitment agencies have traditionally had a physical location where job seeking prospects would go to apply and be assessed in a short interview before being entered into the agencies’ books and their skills reviewed by recruitment consultants; and on a case by case basis matched to potential employer clients’ temporary (“temp”) and permanent “perm” open positions. A recruitment agency, otherwise also known as an employment agency, is therefore a system designed to help people find employment with ease. A recruitment agency connects the job seekers and the employers. And, quite poignantly, technology has today changed how this industry operates; and the process of recruitment which involves identifying the vacancies, preparing the job description and person specification, advertising, managing the response, short-listing, arranging interviews, conducting interviews, decision making, convey the decision and appointment action, can now all be done by softwares for job seekers on the Internet.   With the enviable possibilities of the Internet, people looking for jobs can now search job listings, which are arranged by categories, locations and titles, among others. The Open Source Software firm, OStatic [http://ostatic.com/], provides such software – i.e. a web-based recruitment agency software that can manage all of recruitment efforts – set up job locations, categories, departments, and job titles from the Web interface as an admin user.  CareerSiteBuilder.com [http://www.careersitebuilder.com/] also has what it calls ‘software for recruiters’ which makes the work of building a job candidate’s database easier.  

Yet, because most major employers work with recruiting agencies when looking for employees, that is why recruitment agencies are an essential part of prospects job seeking process. Most recruiters work with an agency, operating as direct liaisons between client companies and the job prospects they sign up; and there are third party recruiters who are independent contractors.  There are recruiters whose forte is in client relationships only, in terms of sales and business development; and there are those who specialize in recruiting or in sourcing candidates; and those who work in both areas. Outsourced recruiters in general work for several clients at once, on a third-party agent basis, and are diversely labeled headhunters, search firms/agents, agency recruiters, or recruitment consultants.

An essential component of the recruiting process is advertising, often encompassing marketing broadcast emails, career fairs, the Internet, general newspapers, job ad newspapers, professional publications, job centers, student career resources and recruitment programs. Recruiting research is the hands-on identification of useful talent who may not respond to job postings and other recruitment advertising methods. This groundwork research for perceived passive prospects, also called name-generation, results in a list of prospects who can then be contacted to solicit interest, obtain a resume/CV, and be screened.

A recruitment agency bridges the gap between the candidate and employer, a function of social intelligence that describes the skill of understanding and managing other people. Hence, the growth area for recruitment agencies is in workforce planning. Companies outsource certain aspects of management functions to recruiting agencies to help create human resource strategies that are closely aligned to the future of their businesses. The goal is to work with a recruitment agency capable of bringing on employees who will assimilate well into a company’s business culture and help the company reach its objectives. In other words, working with a recruitment agency to assist in determining the balance of skills needed, and in growing the talent a company has. And extensive skill matching is what recruitment agencies do to ensure that the right experts are sent for the right jobs. Such jobs can be anywhere from engineering, design, quality control, support, IT, management and finance. The goal is to successfully identify the most qualified experts. And the process of recruitment is to make sure that the job is secured by only the best that can deliver. What a recruitment agency does is to pinpoint companies’ specific requirements and personally match each candidate to the unique needs of the company’s practice.

Choosing a recruitment agency

Companies/organizations: Recruitment agencies handle the posting of job openings, tracking and pre-screening of applicants, running background checks, ensuring compliance with labor laws. In spite of the negative effects of the global recession over these years, with fewer jobs, lower wages and a lot of insecurities, the recruitment industry is still a thriving industry. The depressing effects of the global economic crisis have not terribly impacted agencies dealing with the recruitment and placement of specialized personnel. The reason being that during difficult times, the most important people for a company are those with strong capabilities and with competencies that can be clearly described, measured and put to good use.

Advertising and job recruitments patterns have today undergone a major transformation as online resources are being increasingly used by companies to reach target markets and niche audiences, and using the internet as an effective tool to recruit professionals for various job positions.  Similarly, professionals in retail, finance and customer service now even more depend on online resources to search for better job prospects rather than scheme through employment ad sections in newspapers. There are now specialized job boards that list vacancies of jobs exclusive to a particular sector or category. The costs of using online resources to find potential hires are considerably lower than those of traditional recruitment agencies. Larger employers are still predisposed to carry out their own in-house recruitment, using their human resources department, front-line hiring managers and recruitment personnel who handle targeted functions and populations.  These in-house recruitment personnel may network with external associations, trade organizations and/or focus on campus graduate recruitment programs, a way of reaching out to fill positions. They also advertise job vacancies on their own websites and often manage internal employee referrals. Alternatively, outsourcing all or some of the recruitment processes, using a combination of IT recruitment agencies to fill vacancies, can be a more effective and structured approach for large companies to reach out to an amazing array of manpower services. Some online service providers with global human resource and business leaders that do help keep companies up to date and well informed in recruitment outsourcing knowledge, using a blend of traditional, leading edge and emerging approaches with customized web-based solutions, include the following

• The Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association [http://www.rpoassociation.org/], with a mission to educate the market about recruiting process marketing, provides an online environment companies can use to analyze when to turn to recruitment or employment agencies.  Recruitment Process Outsourcers serve client companies throughout the recruiting/hiring process from job profiling through interviewing – this is their core function. They do those things that are not core to a company’s business, so a company can focus on what gives it a strategic advantage. For temporary help, Business.com [http://www.business.com/], a resource that consistently delivers the highest quality traffic to advertisers through personalized marketing support and an integrated suite of online advertising products including pay-per-click, banner advertising, audience retargeting and directory advertising, can be helpful.
• The SGIA/DPI Industry Employment [http://www.sgia.org/employment/] is a valuable service where companies can list positions available and individuals can build and post resumes. The SGIA/DPI Industry Employment acts as a facilitator between companies seeking employees and individuals seeking employment.
• SmartShift [http://www.staystaffed.com/smartshift_software/] is a secure web-based application that reduces costs and eliminates administrative burdens for companies. SmartShift automates all processes including position posting, candidate sourcing, applicant tracking, assignment, contract management, margin management, documentation processing, payroll, and billing. 
• The Alliance of Information and Referral Systems or simply called AIRS [http://www.airs.org/] a credentialing authority operating an Accreditation Program that measures an organization’s ability to meet the AIRS Standards, and a Certification Program that evaluates the competence of I&R practitioners. AIRS is one of the largest and widely known providers of Recruitment training and certification. 

The recruitment industry is based on the goal of providing a company seeking to make a new hiring in return for a price. The goal is to deliver a candidate that successfully stays with a company beyond the agreed probationary period.By and large, compensation methods for recruiters specializing in direct hire placements fall into two broad categories: contingent and retained.  Contingent recruiters are paid only upon the successful completion of the “search”. Retained recruiters are paid for the process, typically earning a recruiting fee to focus on a client’s needs and achieve milestones in the search for the right prospect, and then again are paid a percentage of the candidate’s salary when a candidate is placed and stays with the organization beyond the probationary period. Today’s recruitment industry is practically competitive, therefore, agencies have sought out ways to distinguish themselves and add value to their tasks by focusing on some area of the recruitment life cycle.

Job seeking prospects: Job seeking prospects who wish to find recruitment agencies, recruitment agency search engines have a tremendous database of information. In search engines agencies are usually sorted based on specializations be they solicitors, legal executives, legal secretaries, or paralegals. The categories usually set the ground on what skills the applicant must have for the specified jobs. The categories help the applicants analyze if they are suited for the job or not. Classified ads usually list skills sets for various jobs; they can therefore be a good place to carefully and regularly look. But job seekers ought to be wary of a recruiting agency that seems to post the same job time and again, this can be a scam rather simply trying to develop a database of potential candidates and not actively recruiting. It is also cautionary to be suspicious of jobs that offer it all—in the recruitment industry if an offer appears too good to be true, it usually is.

Job searching: some resources that can get job seeking prospects through: For many job seekers, searching for a job can be too overwhelming a task.  There exists the tendency of sending out countless resumes, writing cover letters and trying to find time to schedule interviews with potential employers. Even with the many possibilities provided by the Internet, it can also be extremely wearisome visiting multiple websites, submitting online applications and sifting through hundreds of online job postings. Again, even with the opportunities offered by social networking sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to look up corporate website updates, job searches can be genuinely burdensome. A laudable trend, however, in job search is the emergence of meta-search engines which now allow job-seekers to search across multiple websites.  These new search engines have functionalities capable of indexing and listing the advertisements of traditional job boards.  They aim for providing a “one-stop shop” for job-seekers.  And there are other job search engines which index pages solely from employers’ websites, choosing to bypass traditional job boards entirely.  These otherwise allow vertical searches and job-seekers can find new positions not necessarily advertised on traditional job boards, and online recruitment websites. A listing of some of the leading job search resources provided here exemplifies the very persona of the Internet which is one of specialization and personalization – the idea of putting the power of information back in the “hands of the people”.

• Allo Expat Worldwide [http://www.alloexpat.com/]: an A to Z resource for expatriate job seekers worldwide. This is a complete resource for job seekers, retirees, expatriates, and immigrants moving overseas.
• JobFox: a new competitor in the job search market rated a good job site without any scam listings.
• Simply Hired: searches thousands of job sites and companies just so you don’t have to. The nifty tools offered also help job seekers find local jobs, identify tools, and research salaries.
• FWJ Bookmarklet: offers platform for users to add job postings from other sites, useful for web designers to find quality web design jobs.
• Freshwebjobs: a registered job seeker is able to save and mark job postings.
• MetsFilter Jobs: an area for sharing job postings among members.
• Oil-Offshore-Marines.com: a leading online database (jobs search portal) career center, providing online recruitment tools (such as job postings, CV search in the CV database, advertising) to employers, recruitment agencies and advertisers seeking the best oil and gas (including offshore marine) industry candidates for their job vacancies.
• PrivateMilitary.org: offers basic employment requirements of private military companies (PMCs) and private security companies (PSCs) as well as related employers in defense, homeland security and reconstruction sectors.
• Christian Freelance Joboard: provides unlimited bidding on any posted Christian projects.
• The Recruiter Network: the best source for recruitment agencies and job seekers.
• Online Employment Opportunities: uses website to help people looking for a job connect with employers looking to hire people with the right skills.
• CareerXchange: provides comprehensive employment services online.
• Jobbam: provides listings on high paying jobs.
• Coroflot [http://www.coroflot.com/]: a freelance job board. 
• Sologig: created to connect freelance and contract professionals with qualified employers.
• ProSource HealthCare Professionals: a nationally recognized leader in providing search and recruitment specifically for the healthcare industry. 
• Craigslist: an amazingly high-trafficked online classifieds site. 
• Candidate Direct [http://www.candidatedirect.com/healthcare-staffing-partners/faq.html] provides online access to job openings at hospitals nationwide,
• CoSwap: connects businesses with creative freelancers who specialize in freelance website design, flash design and graphic design work.
• Horton International: specializes in the recruitment of finance, management, consulting, information technology etc. 
• Boyden Global Executive Search [http://www.boyden.com/]: a leading global executive search firm that provides the best recruitment solutions. 
• BlueSteps [https://www.bluesteps.com/]: the exclusive service of the Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC), is the only career management service providing senior executives with continual exposure to the world’s leading executive search firms.
• Signature Healthcare Search: a national executive search firm and a strategic partner with its hand-selected client organizations. 
• Agave Blue: a resource for recruiters to find the talent, project managers to find projects and freelancers, and contractors to find contracts.
• Pelfusion: [http://pelfusion.com/inspiration/top-50-web-20-job-applications-sites/], provides a listing of the top 50 Web 2.0 job applications and sites.

On the whole, management and HR leaders have consistently argued there are extensive benefits for companies reaching out to recruitment agencies as their workforce planners. If there was any benefit to this assertion, it was that it demonstrated that recruitment agencies would streamline the hiring process for employers. Outsourcing the recruiting process generally returns results close to the assumptions of the management and HR leaders who suggest them. By outsourcing the recruiting process, client companies won’t spend countless hours hunting down candidates, sorting through hundreds of submissions and conducting interviews and reference checks. Using recruitment agencies allow client companies to focus on doing their job, while professional recruiting firms do their job of finding the top potential candidates to be hired. Recruitment agencies evidently are money savers. By the power of their proprietary search intelligence, they focus attention immediately on the highest potential candidates therefore delivering better candidates to companies more efficiently. HR knowledge leaders familiar with recruitment processes and the impact of information technology in this business note that even social networking sites have helped transformed the recruiting process for all stakeholders in the process—i.e. the recruitment agency, the job seeker and the employer. Dionna Keels, a senior corporate recruiter for a business services company who recruits professionals for information technology and accounting services put it bluntly: “LinkedIn [http://www.linkedin.com/] is a great portal to find passive candidates—people who are not necessarily looking for a job. We can get specific information about them, such as the types of IT systems they know and use, and then reach out to them, making a connection, which can lead to a conversation and probably a job change”.

For job seekers, it is more prospects for them today than those days of the “employment agency”. With IT recruiting, gone are the days since professional recruiting firms always represent the client and not the job candidate.

About the Author

Kenday Samuel Kamara, Ph.D. is a research consultant in development policy analysis and organizational management knowledge. Affiliations: CANADEM Civilian Roster of Consultants: CANADEM Reg. No. 9743 | Intota Expert Network - Expert ID 729334 | Email: kenday.kamara@waldenu.edu.

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