Why do all employers (for professional roles) seem to recruit SOLELY through recruitment agencies these days?

Question

I hate going through recruitment agencies, going to all the endless agency interviews etc,because most of them are fruitless and so they end up a waste of my time!!

I'd rather deal with the employers' HR depts myself. That was possible a few years ago, and I found it most effective for gaining work. No longer!

Ok (deep breath) .. Rant over.

Anyone else find this?

Answer 1

I absolutely agree with you - I was only ranting about it myself on Monday! Agencies are generally a total waste of time - you have to go through the rigmarole of being interviewed by them and then they have no suitable vacancies

Answer 2

It's certainly not the case that all employers use agencies. Medium-sized companies may do, but because agency fees are expensive, large companies find that they are better off employing full-time internal recruiters, and small companies can't afford the agency fees.

The way of the future is Recruitment Outsourcing ... it's where companies contract a recruitment team from a vendor do all their recruiting for them, so they sit at the client's offices alongside the HR team and are fully integrated into the company's business. The advantage is that the company gets someone who has specialist recruitment skills (e.g. headhunting and prescreening) but because they only work with that one client, they become an expert in the client's business and job functions meaning their results are often a closer match to the position than an agency's would be. It also results in cost savings for the company, since agency fees are very, very expensive.

This is what most large companies are doing these days: Deloitte, Microsoft, Britvic, Diageo, and Vodafone to name but a few are some of the many companies that use an RO partner.

But, this doesn't mean that it's the end of agencies. Agencies are still going to be the best bet for finding staff where it's not worth investing a lot of effort in recruiting someone, such as finance (because there is such a high staff turnover) or admin (because the roles pay little).

Answer 3

I don't think this is the case to be honest. Having worked for an agency it was always a bit of a struggle getting employers to come through us prior to advertising themselves. Certainly public sector employers will pretty much always advertise and recruit directly themselves, partly for equal opps reasons, partly for cost reasons. The only companies I ever came across who used agencies all the time were the very big ones (the likes of Coca Cola, BP, HBOS, etc). In these cases they do so much recruitment that they can negotiate very good deals with recruitment consultancies, which in the long run is often cheaper than doing it themselves.

Answer 4

On the flip side, employers who do their own recruiting found that they were wasting a lot of their time interviewing people who really weren't qualified. It made more sense to have an outside agency do the background checks, test and screen applicants first before granting an interview.


Edit: In order for a recruiter to find you a suitable position, you have to have marketable skills. They're not magicians!

Answer 5

It saves the companies having to deal with the Recruitment process, letters, the sifting, the preparing, assuming the agencies have done the hard work and only forwarded people who are best for the job.

i personally hate agencies, and have got jobs several times that they didnt even put me forward for.

You need to find one that you can trust, that knows you well. Otherwise, you're just another figure on their weekly targets .

Answer 6

Because these agencies act as a pre-sorter and save the employer a lot of time wasted on useless applicants and interviewing them. The employer is also protected to a greater extent if the employee is rubbish, dismissal is simpler

Answer 7

The reason is because Hr departments have found they can hire for short periods maybe up to a year without having to give full time working rights...hence they can disengage you(I love management-speak) because you dont officialy work for them.