Hiring top talent is difficult and complicated. Making the right choices is critical to your business’ long-term success. So, what is best for your company, internal recruiters or independent external recruitment providers? In some cases, maybe you just don’t have the bandwidth to do search internally. In other situations, you can consciously make a choice. Let’s look at the advantages and disadvantages of each option.Internal Recruiters vs External Recruiters…Areas of Differentiation
Quality
This is dependent on the role and the quality you are able to pay for with internal recruiters or independent recruiters. Obviously, the people you hire to work within your business can be vetted, trained and held accountable for a level of performance that may be difficult to control from outside firms. But the quality of independents may be easier to assess via interviewing, referrals and often price is indicative of the quality you are paying for from independents.
Price
If you are not hiring new employees all the time, it may be more cost effective to use independent recruiters. You will pay about 25 to 35% of the new hire’s salary, but you do not need to pay an in-house recruiter’s salary, benefits, manage that employee and have them even when there are no needs for new talent. In-house recruitment may be a part of your strategy for roles up to a certain level in the organization. Over senior manager level, it could make sense to find independents to fill higher level roles.
Culture/Fit
A good fit is critical to success of the employee and the business. An in-house recruiter should have an easier time reflecting your company’s culture. If you are to go externally, you need to spend lots of time describing culture and fit and miss candidates. It is not impossible to find great fitting candidates with independents. The more often they work with you and the more you share successes and failures, the better your odds of a positive outcome.
Onboarding Time
The time to get a new employee up to speed can be impacted by the recruitment method used. In-house should speed the process of getting talent acclimated to your business. Again, familiarity and a large number of placements via the same independent recruiter can also provide good results, but likely not as quickly and successfully as a member of your staff with access to calendars and your team.
Candidate Pool
By recruiting internally, you may have fewer quality candidates. Recruiting externally allows for a draw from a larger pool of talent. An independent can call into competitors and affiliated businesses with greater success and flexibility than your in-house team. This increases your chances of finding someone who’s right for a role. When hiring externally, you have access to more top talent. Advertising a position across multiple job boards creates a larger volume of applications.
In-house teams like to draw on internal candidates much more so than independent recruiters. This could lead to more opening behind a promotion and that could create a reduction in efficiency while reducing employee satisfaction. With looks more deeply toward internal candidates, the constant competition and staff rivalries, might affect morale and reduce overall productivity.
Fresh Perspective
New hires bring new viewpoints and might suggest areas for improvement. When comparing internal vs external recruitment, don’t forget the importance of new perspectives. Again, independent recruiters are far more likely to fill roles with top talent from outside you current employee listing.
External recruitment might cause resentment among your existing employees. Relying on external recruitment can cause existing employees to be less willing to work towards self-improvement or company goals.
Diversity/Innovation
External recruitment is a great way of promoting diversity. Employing people with different thought patterns and mental perspectives is of high value to boost innovation. It has been proven that diversity increases innovation.
Conclusion
If you are hiring top talent, it is hard to go wrong. If you have a blend of options you consider before making the decision to hire with an internal team of recruitment professionals or to go outside to located independent recruiters, you are on the right path. If one or the other option has been come a habit, it is time to examine your options and make a conscious choice moving forward.
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