The rapid rise of the internet has irrevocably changed the recruitment business, and traditional high street recruitment agencies have had to find their way among the digitally savvy businesses already engaged in more internet led strategies. In this digital age, with the omnipotence of social media, and the growth of mobile devices, do the services of high-street recruitment agencies warrant their extortionate fees?
Recruitment agencies across the globe serve businesses big and small with varying degrees of success, and let’s face it; in general, they don’t have great reputations. Of course, there are some diamonds in the rough out there. It’s not that all recruitment agencies are ineffective, far from it; but perhaps there’s a better, more efficient way.
Traditional recruitment agencies are vacancy driven, and candidates are pro-actively sourced and placed into companies who are looking to recruit. The agency will then charge anywhere between 15-25% of the successful candidate’s first years’ salary. So, if a company is looking for a Sales Executive, offering £25,000, the recruitment agency would charge between £3750 – £6250. That’s thousands of £££ in recruitment agency fees.
This inflated cost does not necessarily reflect the workload. Perhaps pre-internet, when newspapers were job advertising royalty and the fax machine was a popular part of any professional correspondence, agencies had a fixed place searching for candidates on behalf of those with little time, as they had to offer a multifaceted approach that was entirely manual and time consuming. In our view, the immediacy, and convenience of internet based sourcing does not warrant these high fees. The sophistication of online systems cuts down the recruitment agency workload significantly. So why are agency fees so still so high?
At Spider HQ, we are on a mission to disrupt the local recruitment scene. We believe in being transparent, and realistic when it comes to recruitment; we don’t charge extortionate rates. Spider offers fixed fee recruitment advertising solutions for just £595. Predominantly, our services focus on candidate attraction; luring top talent into our web on behalf of the employer. There are no hidden costs, and we tailor advertising campaigns to suit the unique recruitment needs of each company. Essentially, we are utilising the online space, using modern technology to our advantage in a fair, cost effective way.
So, what do you think? – Do the services of high-street recruitment agencies warrant their extortionate fees? Or do you think it’s about time they reduced their fees in accordance with new, smarter technology that does a lot of the work for them?