Who pays for the recruitment consultant fees?

Question

If the company advertises and goes through a consultant company who pays the fees, is it the company or the person who gets the job?
Thanks

Answer 1

If you are talking about a Head Hunter type arrangement, it works as follows: The company contracts with the recruiter to provide candidates for a specific job or jobs. The recruiter contacts prospective clients it feels meet the companies criteria for the specific position. If the company hires a person referred by the recruiter then the company pays the recruiter a prearranged fee based on the type of job and the annual pay rate of the job.

Never pay a recruiter to find you a job. Many of the firms who ask you for money in order to find you a job are either not on the level or they are career development firms that have no real interest in finding you a position or may not even have any arrangement with hiring companies.

Answer 2

I don't know what your recruitment company is doing, other than linking you up with employers. Are they providing other services? Even if they do nothing other than link companies and employees, there is a cost of them doing that. Rather than charge you a fee, then get reimbursed (plus profit) through skimming from your wage. I'm in the US, so I don't know the economics of this business in the UK, but I'm used to billing out an employee at 2-3 times what I'm paying them. Mind you, that includes my costs of office space, benefits (this is the US.... health insurance costs are high), etc. So, a person getting paid $24/hour can be billed out at $75 and I don't make an unreasonable profit.

Answer 3

All fees are paid by the company that hires the employee. While it adds to the cost of hiring, many specialized and technical jobs are VERY hard to fill. Finding qualified candidates can take months...even years. Most recruiting firms specialize in those types of hard-to-recruit areas like Information Technology (IT guys). The hiring company often realizes much lower costs of hiring someone by paying for a recruiter than they would by conducting a slower, longer internal search.

Answer 4

In New York, the potential employer is responsible for the fee to the employment agency or headhunter. (I've not heard of an exception, but that doesn't mean there isn't one.) Your state could very well have different rules and regs.

The recruitment fee can be quite a large "nut", as it is predicated on a percentage of the employee's annual salary.

Answer 5

The company. The fee is usually paid in one of two ways: Either as a fixed fee, or equal to a % of the person employd salary.