When and why you should outsource recruitment to a specialist

Yes, you know your business better than anyone, and you have a picture in your mind of who the right people will be to enhance your team.

But, and it’s a big but, recruitment can be time-intensive and time is your most precious and limited commodity.

So, what you need to weigh up is whether writing and placing job adverts, and sifting through potentially hundreds of applications throughout the year, is the best use of your time?

Recruitment specialists, like the expert team at Pure^® HR based in Hampshire, are concentrating on these tasks every day, making them highly efficient, streamlined and effective.

When should you outsource your recruitment?

Any time is the right time for outsourcing recruitment. It is an option available to you that frees your time up to concentrate on other valuable tasks that only you can do. Tasks that are better suited to your skillset.

Think about how many vacancies you might have, and how much time you would need to invest to run the process in-house, alongside juggling your availability with your other responsibilities.

We see our clients being stretched thin, and finding it a challenge to give recruitment the attention it needs, when they’re pulled away to other tasks. By outsourcing recruitment you’re able to focus purely on recruitment, without any distractions.

Also, of course your time doesn’t come for free so it is important to compare the costs of hiring external specialists with the resource cost of your own time.

Why should you outsource your recruitment?

The main benefit of outsourcing your recruitment is that you’re handing over a key role to experts who are working in that specialist field every day.

It might seem like a straightforward process that needs no technical qualifications but it’s quite an eye opener when you scratch beneath the surface and see how much value a specialist can add.

As a specialist recruitment provider, we have the buying power to place our adverts in the optimum positions, giving you the best chance of the right people seeing your adverts.

And, through many years of experience, we have picked up all sorts of tips and tricks to maximise efficiencies in our processes and optimise your chance of success. For example, one thing we have learned is that any job title containing ‘Engineering’ attracts a large proportion of candidates who aren’t based in the UK, which could be an issue and could take a lot of time to sift out overseas applicants, so that is something that we would be looking out for and managing accordingly.

How much does outsourcing recruitment cost?

That really depends on your needs and what kind of agency or service you use.

Traditionally, if you are using a recruitment specialist to hire a senior position, i.e. C-suite role, say with a £70k+ annual salary, you are likely to pay 30-33% of  the role’s base salary for a full search and selection service. This is normally payable in three instalments.

When you hire a recruitment agency, they will tend to work on the basis of the more vacancies you give them, the lower their rate will be. 15-20% is fairly typical in today’s market.

We feel that it is important to build a long-term relationship with our clients and so we work differently, providing, instead, a fixed-fee recruitment service.

Benefits of Fixed Fee Recruitment vs Agency

With our fixed-fee cost being £995 + VAT, you know exactly where you stand. Regardless of the successful candidate’s salary, you are paying the same rate for our time and effort to take care of your whole recruitment service end to end. The salary doesn’t make a difference.

What is the process at Pure HR?

We can’t guarantee finding a candidate for you, as we are dependent on you making the selection, but what we can guarantee is being very efficient at what we do and we can also guarantee being cost effective.

Our systems and processes make us incredibly efficient. This includes our applicant tracking system.

When people apply for a job and they click on the hyperlink, they are automatically uploaded on to our system. We can sift applications quickly and efficiently, based on basic information like removing any candidates who can’t prove their right to work, as well as sifting candidates based on criteria that we have already agreed with you.  This could include ‘killer questions’, as we call them, like “Do you have the relevant quality and quantity of experience in this particular field?” If they don’t, they can be sifted out of the next stage of the process.

The next step would be for us to carry out telephone interviews to further sift your pool of candidates. The idea is that we do this sifting process for you as if we were your internal recruiter.

We are always aware that we are representing you and your brand, and any interaction we have with your candidates throughout the selection process will be having an impact on your reputation. With this in mind, we understand the importance of keeping in touch with candidates on a regular basis, treating them courteously and giving them feedback.

Our applicant tracking system means that we can manage all candidates throughout the process. We know exactly where everyone is and no-one falls between the cracks.  Our system also means we can keep you up to date with accurate data during the selection process.

Another really big advantage of outsourcing recruitment to a specialist is the protection it gives you regarding avoiding potential discrimination claims.With us managing the process on your behalf, externally and completely independently, it means that you can confidently claim that there is no bias, whatsoever, throughout the process.

Getting the job advert right

A key benefit of our service is the knowledge and expertise we bring to getting the job advert content right, maximising our chances of enticing the best candidates for you. We know how to make the most of a job board – the optimum advert length, what detail to include and so on.

Firstly, our priority is to talk to you and really get to know you and what your company is all about. Recruitment is a marketing exercise and the better we can sell your company the higher calibre candidates we will attract.

You may not even appreciate what your strong points are but, by talking to you, we will draw out your USPs, whether they are about your company’s values and performance, your benefits and hopefully the job role itself.

It is also helpful if you have a job description for the role that we can review.  We will carry out a salary benchmark to make sure that the amount you are offering is in the right ballpark as it is a waste of everyone’s time to advertise a role if it’s not.

It is easy for potential candidates to find salary ranges online, and people are unlikely to apply if you are not offering enough money.

Unless there is a justified reason for a company to remain anonymous, we advise including your company’s name in your job advert. We have found that this tactic can mean that candidates are already engaged and invested in your company before they even apply.  They may have done some research online, i.e. on sites like Glassdoor, and they may have asked around and talked to people who know you or work with you.  It all helps them to make a conscious decision of thinking “If they offered me a job, I’d really like to work with them.”

In our position, we get to bulk buy premium job credits which means that, when your job is advertised, it goes to the top of the pile and stays there, keeping it fresh and making sure all new applicants see your advert as they visit job sites.  This buying power gives us a significant saving that we can pass on to you, whereas if you were to buy job credits yourself you are likely to have to pay considerably more.

Contact Pure® Human Resources

If you would like us to help you with your recruitment process, and answer any questions you may have, our friendly and expert team would love to hear from you.

You can call us on 01794 329470, email us or fill out the Contact Form on our website.