For many years as a 360-degree recruiter, I have been trying to work out the sweet spot of advising clients when they should trust a recruiter to enter their process – and get the person they need.
Over those years, I have gathered, maybe the obvious confirmed – A recruitment agency should not be the automatic answer to every vacancy. But it should not be treated as the emergency service you call after six months of failed adverts, wasted interviews and an exhausted hiring manager either. I wrote a blog recently talking about the cost of a vacancy being open – and how a recruiter can save you money.
But when it’s too late – you’re already knee-deep in cost, and about 6-10k is probably the only option.
That aside, the question will always be if it makes commercial sense for the role you are trying to fill.
Some vacancies can be filled perfectly well through a company’s own advertising, internal recruitment team, employee referrals or existing network.
Others need a proper search. The difficulty is recognising the difference early enough.
When You Probably Do Not Need a Recruitment Agency
If a role regularly attracts good applicants, the salary is competitive, and the skills are readily available, advertising directly will probably be the right option.
There is no point in paying an agency fee for a vacancy you can fill quickly and successfully yourself. UNLESS – there is a serious time restraint, or you, as a hiring manager, just like to pay for a service like recruitment, like we pay for our car to be serviced, or our windows to be cleaned, or get home delivery for your food shop – these things we can do ourselves. But we pay for time back – and energy not doing them.
But a direct approach often makes sense when:
- The role is straightforward and well understood
- The business already has a strong employer brand
- Previous adverts have produced good candidates
- The required skills are widely available
- The hiring team has time to manage the process properly
- There is no immediate commercial pressure to fill the position
A good recruiter should be honest enough to say that. Recruitment agencies should not exist to make simple recruitment more expensive – it should always save you time, money and energy and should solve problems a business cannot easily solve itself.
When a Recruitment Agency Starts to Make Sense
An agency becomes valuable when the normal route is unlikely to produce the right result.
That might be because the candidate market is small, the role is specialist, the location is difficult or the strongest people are not actively applying for jobs.
It may also be because the vacancy has already been advertised and the response has been poor. There is a big difference between advertising and recruiting.
Advertising puts a vacancy in front of people who are already looking. Or sometimes passively looking – and there is a whole science I can talk about, how to capture those passive people, most companies are really looking for – and why we exist as recruiters.
Recruiting identifies the right people, approaches them directly, explains the opportunity and gives them a reason to consider moving – it’s beyond just a sell. And over the years, I have found that honest, good conversations result in bringing the right and good people to a client – it’s the best way.
And especially for specialist engineering, technical, sales and management appointments, the best candidate is often not sitting on a job board waiting for your advert.
- They may be reasonably happy where they are.
- They may not have updated their CV for five years.
- They may not even know your company exists.
AND that is where a recruiter should earn the fee – finding the people you don’t have approaching – and more than likely meet the requirements.
- The Role Has Already Been Open Too Long
One of the clearest signs that a business should consider an agency is time. Not because every role should be filled within a fortnight, but because the same recruitment method rarely improves simply because it has been running for longer.
If the advert has been live for six weeks and the applicants are still wrong, another six weeks may simply produce more of the same. Businesses often continue because they have already spent money on advertising and feel they need to give it more time.
But that can turn into expensive persistence. As you creep up to 15-20% of the salary in advertising, and your time. You could have paid an agency to solve it, which has a bigger budget, a wider view of the market – and can probably match the spec closer than an Indeed advert.
But after all that cost, the vacancy remains open. Or maybe you didn’t advertise on a job board and had the role open on the website – and it’s yielded 4 people from another country and no local options.
But that will still have the internal cost implication of – Managers continue covering the gap, Projects are delayed, Revenue is missed, Existing staff absorb more work.
The cost keeps building, even if you don’t pay for an advert – or if it appears on one invoice from a recruiter.
There needs to be a point where the business pulls the rip cord and changes approach.
2. You Need Skills That Are Difficult to Find
Some skills are simply harder to recruit than others. A niche engineer with experience in a particular product, market, software package or manufacturing environment may exist in a very small candidate pool.
The same applies to technical salespeople who need both commercial ability and credible sector knowledge.
In these cases, placing an advert and waiting can be little more than hope as a recruitment strategy.
A specialist recruiter should already understand where those people work, what would make them move and whether the brief is realistic.
That does not guarantee an appointment. Anyone who guarantees that before carrying out the search is probably getting ahead of themselves.
But it should give the business a far better understanding of the market and a more focused route to the right people.
3. The Best Candidates Are Not Applying
This is probably one of the biggest reasons to use an agency. Businesses often judge the candidate market by the applications they receive.
But the applicants are only the people who have seen the advert, decided they are interested and chosen to apply. That is not the whole market.
It may not even be the strongest part of it. Applications that are relevant – but need a conversation first- only make up around 2% of applications on average; the more niche the role, the smaller that number.
A good recruiter goes beyond the active applicant pool. They speak to people who are employed, performing well and not spending their evenings scrolling through job boards.
Those conversations take time. There is a lot of mapping, discovery, head-hunting, and kicking over rocks. It can take 100 approaches to get 10 conversations; out of 10 conversations, it can sometimes only yield 1 person to present. So, some roles can literally take 1000 approaches to place 1 person. That’s 1000 people not applying, FYI.
They also require trust, credibility and enough understanding of the role to make the opportunity worth listening to. That is the search you are paying for.
Not access to a CV database.
4. Your Internal Team Does Not Have the Time
Recruitment often becomes an additional responsibility for people who already have full-time jobs.
A hiring manager may need to write the advert, review applications, respond to candidates, arrange interviews, provide feedback, manage internal discussions and keep the process moving.
HR may be handling several vacancies alongside every other responsibility in the business.
- It is easy for recruitment to drift.
- Applications sit untouched.
- Strong candidates lose interest.
- Interviews are delayed.
- Feedback takes a week.
By the time a decision is made, the person has accepted another job. An agency can be useful simply because someone is taking ownership of the process. That does not remove responsibility from the hiring manager. The business still needs to make decisions, give feedback and sell the opportunity.
But it stops the search from becoming something everyone intends to deal with when they get a spare afternoon. “I’ll do that after doing my day job” – an HR manager said to me once, when arranging an interview with a hiring manager. And I get it. Recruitment is the B side to the day for some internal functions.
5. The Vacancy Is Costing More Than the Fee
A recruitment fee is visible. I send you an invoice when the candidate starts. The cost of an open vacancy usually is not. Not at first. An open vacancy today will have a different emotion to the same open vacancy in 6 months’ time for a sales manager or an Engineering Manager under pressure to hit targets.
That is why the fee often feels more expensive than waiting. But waiting has a cost.
It may include lost revenue, reduced output, project delays, overtime, temporary cover, missed customer opportunities and management time. It’s £100 here, £30 there, £1000 over there. all adding up to £1000s of missed or lost revenue.
But the other unseen cost is also the impact on existing employees.
If people are covering two jobs for long enough, the business may eventually have two vacancies instead of one.
I want to stress again that this does not mean every open role justifies an agency fee. It does mean the comparison should be honest. The choice is rarely between paying a recruiter and recruiting for free.
It is usually between paying for a defined service now and continuing to absorb a less visible cost across the business.
That’s what I am trying to highlight here.
6. You Have Tried Advertising, and It Has Not Worked
This is where many agencies become involved. After the fact. The business has advertised once, twice or several times. Kept renewing, time goes by – may have had the odd interview – a bit like a “Let’s try the person that isn’t there on paper – maybe they turn out ok…”
I know what it’s like – Applications have arrived, but very few have been relevant. So you grab one that looks like “maybe”, interview them, and depending on where you are in the stress of getting the role done – you either reject them because Quelle supreme – the candidate interviewed poorly – or they interviewed ok, but hired them, and they lasted 2 weeks, and now you are back at square one.
Or maybe you did this more than once for this role, or others??
At that point, the answer is not always to repost the same advert with a different perspective and learn. Something needs to change.
- It could be the salary – a higher salary may get better experience – which can be true.
- It could be the location, flexibility, job title, responsibilities or interview process.
- It could also be that the right people are not applying and need to be approached directly.
A specialist recruiter should be able to challenge the brief as well as work on it. Sometimes the most valuable thing an agency can say is:
“You will not fill this role as it currently stands.” “Or you have failed to retain people – because you have basically hired the wrong people from the adverts”
That may not be what the client wants to hear, but it is considerably more useful than taking any Joe, because you need a bum on a seat.
And believe me, I have witnessed this a lot in my time in recruitment – and the only way out is to break the cycle.
6. You Need Market Feedback, Not Just CVs
When you engage with a recruiter about a role, the questions they will ask may feel like they are opening the roof of your company and judging what they see inside, but A recruiter should provide more than candidate introductions. They need the whole picture.
Mostly to tell you a few home truths about where you sit. They should be able to tell you what the market is saying.
- Is the salary competitive?
- Is the job title attracting the wrong people?
- Are candidates rejecting the location?
- Is the required experience unrealistic for the salary?
- Are competitors offering more flexibility?
- Is the interview process too slow?
This information allows the business to make decisions.
Without it, a vacancy can remain open for months while everyone assumes the problem is a shortage of good candidates.
And sometimes it is. Sometimes the role itself is the problem.
7. When Using More Agencies Is Not the Answer
We can go the opposite way sometimes, here I am trying to convince you as a company to use an agency for the right vacancy at the right time. A common response to a difficult vacancy is to send it to more recruitment agencies.
The theory is simple. More agencies should mean more candidates. Right?
In practice, it often means several recruiters contacting the same small group of people, usually with different versions of the job. Why? The brief will ask for X – and the market will have X, but the pool is usually very small.
Because if it were easy to find X, you would do it yourself.
Nobody has real ownership when this happens. Everyone knows they are racing against several competitors – so you start to get a quality drop-off. The work becomes faster, shallower and more transactional.
The client receives duplicated CVs, mixed messages and little useful market feedback. Because all that matters is getting there first, and not servicing your needs, the business, the candidate and supporting the crucial thing here… the role.
If a role is difficult, the answer is usually not more agencies. It is a better relationship with the right one, that specialises in that type of work. So, Engineer for engineering, accountancy for accountants.. etc.
That might mean exclusivity, a defined search period, regular communication and clear expectations on both sides.
8. What Should a Business Expect From an Agency?
Using a recruitment agency should not mean emailing a job description and waiting for CVs to arrive. Although I say that, I do have companies I work with, that do that, but I have worked with them for years. And know the business well, placed multiple candidates and supported them with advice and market feedback. It’s a good place to aim for.
But its important – A proper recruitment process should include:
- A detailed conversation about the role and the business
- Honest feedback on salary and market conditions
- Agreement on what is essential and what is flexible – and the full upfront cost.
- A clear search strategy
- Regular communication
- Proper candidate qualification
- Clear explanation of why each candidate has been introduced
- Support through interviews, offers and resignation
- Accountability when the search is not progressing
The agency should understand what it has been asked to solve. The business also has responsibilities. Feedback needs to be prompt. Interview availability needs to be realistic.
The hiring process needs to be clear.
Candidates need to leave interviews understanding why they should join. Recruitment works best as a shared process, not as an order placed with a supplier.
So, When Should You Use a Recruitment Agency?
TLDR;
- Use one when the cost, difficulty or importance of the vacancy justifies specialist support.
- Use one when the right candidates are unlikely to apply directly.
- Use one when advertising has failed.
- Use one when the role has remained open long enough to affect the business.
- Use one when your internal team does not have the time or network to carry out a proper search.
- Use one when you need honest market information, not just another batch of CVs
- And use one before the situation becomes an emergency.
- Not every role needs an agency.
But when a vacancy is difficult, commercially important or beginning to damage the business, there should be a point where waiting stops being patience and starts becoming an expensive decision.
The question is not simply whether you can avoid paying a recruitment fee.
The question is whether avoiding it is actually saving you any money.