Hiring recruitment agencies?

Hiring recruitment agencies…is it worth it?  Some smaller health care organizations have wondered if it makes sense for them to hire a recruitment agency. There are many articles on the pros and cons of hiring a recruitment agency. We have listed some of the advantages in our web site. But, when you are a smaller health care organization, is it affordable and productive to hire a recruitment agency?  

The answer to that question depends on how challenged your organization is by long term openings, finding the right talent who will fit into your current employee culture, and finding enough time to do searches for candidates, interview candidates, vet, and on-board candidates.  However, with the talent shortages in most every type of role in health care, it can cost real revenue to have vacancies. These types of long-term vacancies also impact quality of care.  

Some of the disadvantages of hiring a recruitment agency can be the reputation of some of these agencies and the negative user some candidates have had or heard about regarding recruiting agencies.  It can take time to find the right agency and can take some valuable start up time. Setting up the right fees and payments for recruiters also can impact the experience of hiring an agency to help you recruit.

An article in LinkedIn about the pros and cons of hiring recruiting agencies sizes up the problem of determining whether an organization needs a recruiting agency by saying, “The talent shortage is becoming a serious issue around the world. According to ManpowerGroup, 45% of companies say they can’t find the skills they need, and for large organizations (250+ employees) it’s even higher, with 67% reporting talent shortages. As reported by the source, in a new Korn Ferry study that includes a sweeping country-by-country analysis, the biggest issue isn’t that robots are taking all the jobs – it’s that there aren’t enough qualified humans to take them. Indeed, the study finds that by 2030, there will be a global human talent shortage of more than 85 million people, or roughly equivalent to the population of Germany.” The article agrees that it is important to consider employer culture and whether the agency can understand the culture enough to find a good cultural fit. Also, it points out that a bad recruiting agency can damage an employer’s brand. 

Other articles point out that if a recruiting agency is focused on your business and not scattered over many clients, they can act almost as an internal recruiting group. This is what RPO can be like in the best case. Other advantages of hiring a recruiting agency are that they are well versed in the hiring process and can often achieve targeted hiring quicker than internal teams.  Freeing up internal teams to work on other priorities is another advantage often mentioned in evaluation of hiring recruiting companies. Databases and connection with relevant candidates are also mentioned as a benefit for recruiting companies.

At Hire Outcomes HR, our mission is clear, to have a good client and candidate experience and to be easy to work with. Our goal is to collaborate with organizations to discover the power of a positive company culture to attract and retain talented people and to help them develop great workplaces that are attractive to job seekers and spark better team engagement, retention, and results.

Source: (99+) Pros and Cons of Working with Recruitment Agencies | LinkedIn, The Pros and Cons of Using a Recruiter – HR Daily Advisor (blr.com)