Recruitment outsourcing is the utilisation of a specialist external organisation for the sourcing and hiring of staff. Their task is to perform all aspects of the recruitment process; from profiling through to the advancement of candidates to the interview stage. Increasing numbers of businesses are turning to external recruitment companies in order to recruit the best possible new starters to their organisation.

The task of recruiting was historically amongst the duties of the human resources department of an organisation, but many large companies are now looking to outsource this task so that the HR department can focus more upon business strategy and existing personnel management. Small businesses which lack a dedicated human resources function are particularly reliant upon recruitment outsourcing as a means of gaining the best possible new staff with minimum disruption to their day to day operations.

Utilising an external, specialist organisation to perform your recruitment for you brings with it a number of benefits:

Lower Cost

Advertising for a position yourself can be an extremely costly endeavour. Just having your job advert listed on one job board can cost several hundred pounds – and having an advert put into the local paper can cost considerably more. When utilising an external recruitment organisation, your job advert is pushed out through their carefully researched and highly effective channels as part of your fee. Flat fee recruitment in particular represents incredible value in terms of the total cost of the service.

Faster Sourcing

Given that a dedicated recruitment agency is an expert in their field and fully geared towards highly effective recruitment practices: they will almost certainly perform the task of recruiting for a role considerably faster than you could do so in-house.

Higher Quality of Candidates

Not only will a recruitment specialist be able to source candidates very quickly, but will also make maximum use of their experience, networks and contacts to find the best possible people for the job.

Improved Time Efficiency

Outsourcing your recruitment requirements avoids the need to allocate your own time or that of another member of staff to the task of sourcing candidates. If your company doesn’t have a fulltime human resources function then this is a particularly strong argument for bringing a recruitment company on board.