I read a blog post called "Death of a Recruiter" which was talking about taking recruitment in-house. The author said "....we saved over $100,000 in recruiter fees by finding those five resources ourselves. The level of effort was a 15 minute search on LinkedIn or a 30 second Tweet for each search."
This makes me rather cross.
I know there are SOME recruiters out there who charge a 20% of base salary fee and do very little work for it.
I know there are corporates out there who think ALL recruiters charge a 20% of base salary fee and do very little for it.
However, I also know that anyone who wants to stay in the industry for any length of time and get repeat business from clients DOES NOT charge a 20% fee to only searched LinkedIn.
If you want someone just to find CVs for you (ie, you want to "vet" them yourself) you would hire a researcher not a recruitment company.
Recruiters charging 20% (or 15% of 30%) may use LinkedIn (and of course you should) to help find candidates, sources, etc. They may use Twitter too. However, they are going to need to screen CVs/profiles, interview the candidates, arrange for them to meet the client, take feedback from the client, broker the deal, etc etc. From a skills perspective they should be worth that 20% fee because of their experience of the market, superior interviewing skills, negotiation of offer skills, ability to coach the client, prepare the candidate, etc. If you aren't checking that is the level of service you are getting and believe/accept that recruiters JUST do a LinkedIn search and next thing you know the "employee" is sitting at their new desk then, yes, you are going to risk ending up with a dodgy recruiter. That may make the recruiter dodgy but surely it also makes the client something of a fool.
I think it's great that companies are taking recruitment in house but it is not the "death" of recruiters.
Comments