One the most important decisions hiring managers and recruitment directors will make is which recruitment agency to hire. This decision alone will affect their:
- internal reputation at the company
- aggravation and frustration levels during and long after the hiring process
- team’s performance in the short- and long-run
- ability to meet their department aspirations and help drive overall company growth
Clearly, hiring managers and recruitment directors must get this decision right.
This article focuses on arguably the biggest problem companies have today with recruiting agencies in general: receiving average to poor quality candidates from the recruiting agency they hired and trusted.
Let’s dive into just some of the major ramifications for companies when their recruiting agency sends them poor quality candidates.
Wasted Time & Resources
A company needs to review the resumes and/or interview the candidates that their recruitment agency recommends. If the assigned recruiter at recruitment agency does not properly vet (because they are overwhelmed with the volume of positions they need to fill at the placement-driven agency they work for) or lacks the real-world experience in the role they are recruiting for, the chances are high that the hiring manager is going to waste a lot time.
HR departments and hiring managers spend significant time and resources screening, interviewing, and evaluating candidates. In fact, per a Glassdoor report, the average interview process in the U.S. takes about 24 days. Some reports have it as high as 40+ days. Each poor quality candidate extends this process, wasting valuable time while increasing the hiring manager’s blood pressure.
Even more worrisome is when the poor quality candidate slips past the overwhelmed recruiter all the way through the hiring process and actually gets hired…only later to be discovered that the candidate is not a good fit for the role based on their hard- and/or soft-skills. The big investment of time and money into the candidate’s training and onboarding is wasted.
There a couple of reasons this may happen. First, the recruiter lacks years of real-world experience in the role s/he is recruiting for. S/he does not understand the nuances of the role and does not speak the same language as the candidate. As a result, this type of recruiter has trouble screening the right candidates and deciphering resumes to move forward with. Moreover, they are unfamiliar with the right questions and follow-up, probing questions to ask during an interview to truly know if the candidate is a great fit for the role. Second, many recruiters are simply overwhelmed today. They work for a placement-driven recruiting factory who gives them too many roles to fill; making it nearly impossible to do a great job for and deliver awesome candidates to any one client company.
Reputation Damage
Recruitment heads, HR, and hiring managers have a huge influence on what recruiting agency the company hires and trusts. If that recruiting agency stalls the interview process by delivering average to poor quality candidates or, even worse, the company hires an unfit candidate delivered from their recruiting, their internal reputation and ability to screen & select the right recruiting agency will be questioned openly, privately, and/or at the real or virtual company water cooler.
Don’t get me wrong, most every company has a bad hire or two in their past. According to a CareerBuilder survey, 74% of employers have made a bad hire, with each costing an average of $14,900. But anything over two within a year or two is fair game for the HR department, recruitment head, and/or hiring manager to be questioned about their ability to vet and hire an awesome recruiting agency that delivers exceptional candidates.
Decreased Morale and Productivity
I remember being a part of two different marketing teams where the company hired the wrong candidate to fill an open marketing role on the team. Each candidate came from a well-known, reputable recruiting agency. Turns out they were really just placement-driven recruiting machines in disguise.
In each instance, within six months, there was chatter that Joe and Sue just weren’t good fits for a different reasons. Because the rest of the team either had to put in extra hours to pick-up the slack for our new teammate (decreasing their work/life balance) or they just didn’t mesh with the rest of the team; morale and productivity absolutely dropped. But even worse, an awesome team member who had been with the company for years left the company as a result. Which brings us to the next ramification….
Increased Turn-over
This can be a double-edge sword situation as I alluded to. Not only will an unfit new hire from a placement-driven recruiting factory likely not last a year at the new company, the company risks losing high-performing employees/team members as a result of the bad hire, as in the example above.
The last dilemma a company wants is an unhealthy turnover ratio that destroys morale and has good employees looking for greener pastures at another company….that could realistically start by hiring a bad-match employee from your recruiting agency.
Wasted Money
Agency fees and payment plan options today are, for the most part, too high, inflexible, and client-company unfriendly. What makes this pill even harder to swallow is when the recruiting agency delivers average to poor candidates to their clients.
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that the average cost of a bad hire is up to 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings. For example, a bad hire with an annual salary of $50,000 could cost a company $15,000.
As you can see, the costs are steep if your recruiting agency isn’t consistently identifying, screening, and recommending you exceptional candidates. At the oftentimes too steep fees and inflexible, strict payment structure & terms most recruiting agencies charge, companies deserve awesome candidates at the very least. However, as crazy as it is, the problem of receiving quality candidates remains an issue today. This is just one reason why Periphery Staffing Solutions was born….
About Periphery Staffing Solutions
With decades of real-world experience working in and leading marketing and IT departments, working with average to poor recruiting agencies as both hiring managers and candidates, and having interviewed hundreds of candidates, Periphery Staffing Solutions is uniquely qualified to deliver better marketing and IT candidates at all levels and specialty areas than today’s overwhelmed, placement-driven ‘recruiting machines’ and real-world experience lacking life-long recruiters. We bring a refreshing, far more strategic and client-driven experience to both companies and candidates.
We are super passionate about marketing, IT, staying current with these dynamic industries, and what we do. We value building and nurturing close, genuine, strategic relationships with our clients and candidates just as much as making a successful placement. As a human-driven agency, we will never use any kind of a bot to screen candidates/resumes.
We are proud that our views, thinking, approach, and philosophy on successful recruiting is on the periphery of all other recruiting agencies in the industry. When a company partners with us on their marketing and IT openings, they can expect better candidates and a better, richer experience.
When you are ready for better, we would love to speak with you!
cdegobbi@peripherystaffing.com201.446.2217