08 May 2009

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Good news for businesses!! The options open to any business owner planning to recruit are changing and for once they are being faced with potential savings of thousands.

If you were planning to recruit the question “do I use an agency?” was often one which frustrated many due to the fee’s involved. You know that recruiters have access to databases and a wider range of advertising mediums which would traditionally be difficult to match for most businesses. Alongside that comes their expertise and the time they will dedicate to the role…but what are the other options?

Direct
Advertise on your website, the job centre and the local paper and hope for the best? Not anymore. These days sites such as Gumtree are being used as well as companies making the most of their blogs and social networking presence on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. This is as well as using PPC campaigns and offering incentives to workers for referrals. Such a variety of direct methods mean you can generate a much better response rate but obviously still leave somebody the job of sorting through the cv’s, arranging diaries and interviewing.

However there are more options being offered by the Recruitment industry as well.

Low Cost / Fixed Fee pricing
in recent years as recruitment has become more “web focused” and Web 2.0 technology has evolved we have seen the emergence of more companies offering the “flat fee recruitment” pricing model. Seen as low cost recruitment these companies offer the basic functions of recruitment (such as advertising and some other tasks that can now be easily automated) at a fraction of previous prices. Often taking fee’s partly upfront a campaign can cost £500 instead of £5000.

Obviously price is a big attraction here as you know exactly what to budget for that campaign and you know cv’s will be coming in. The downside is different companies offer different levels of service and few offer the same service you may have experienced with a good recruiter. It is a “pile em’ high sell em’ cheap” market and clients will still be left with a certain amount of legwork to do.

Be aware that often there can be time limits to these flat fee campaigns which may leave a bad taste in your mouth if you have paid upfront, not seen any good cv’s and yet are still out of pocket!

Overall these services are gaining momentum especially during the current economic recession and are creating a healthy amount of competition for the more traditional recruiters, especially those who have been providing a low level of “added value” to their service!

Various Packaged Recruitment Services
Between these two polarized markets of flat fee and traditional recruiters has now come the next natural step and we are seeing a variety of recruitment service packages being offered. These are currently coming from specialized independents and offer the high value expertise of the traditional recruiter but tailored into a variety of recruitment packages designed to provide stepped options from the low cost recruitment right up to the full managed process we have come to expect from our recruiters. The key to these are that you gain not only expertise but continuity as the same recruiter is able to offer the most suitable package whatever the requirement.

So if you are thinking of recruiting now or in the future there has never been as much choice open to you as there is now. Sit down and think through exactly what services you need and what you can afford to outsource then look for a solution that suits you!

This Article is written by Grant Bodie the Director of Mount Recruitment Ltd an IT Recruitment consultancy based in Lancashire who offer a range of IT packaged recruitment services.
Grant has a number of years experience working with both multinationals and SME’s on all aspects of their recruitment campaigns and places a lot of emphasis on building levels of trust and communication.
More information can be found at http://www.mountrecruitment.co.uk 

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