5 Things Recruitment Agencies Won’t Tell You

Finding the best talent requires moving beyond the limitations of traditional staffing agencies. Explore the top 5 things recruitment agencies won’t tell you.

It is an employee-driven workforce in the world of recruitment as the unemployment rate has decreased to 3.8%. This means there are fewer qualified candidates available to fill recruiting demands.

The pressure on recruiters is high, so this makes their job more competitive and may lead to a lack of transparency.

Let’s take a look at the top 5 things recruitment agencies won’t tell you and why an RPO may be a better option.

1. They’re in a Rush

In the digital age, recruiting agencies have had to come up with a lot of creative ways to get potential employees’ attention. But, for them to be efficient, they must cast a wide net to meet their quotas as they chase placement fees and commissions.

While technology-based recruiting techniques help them reach more people in the shortest time, the process is often too quick and impersonal. This leaves you with unvetted candidates who may not be qualified for the job.

Hiring an RPO, however, ensures that they will focus solely on your company, with a more specific plan of streamlining your recruitment operations. 

2. They Don’t Disclose All Reference Details

Even if a recruitment agency does go through the process of checking references, they might ignore or hide bad feedback.

Their policy might be to check two out of the three references but will add the third if they get one bad comment. Or they may ask the candidate for more references to find a positive one.

The agency does not have to disclose its findings to you and can choose to only put the positive references in its portfolio. This habit avoids the tedious effort of starting from scratch and finding another candidate.

3. The Resumes You See From Them May Be Edited

Another tactic used by recruiting agencies to speed up the process and make candidates look more qualified is resume editing. While some agencies may be honest about their resume building as a service to the candidate, most are not so honorable and will alter resumes to make the candidates seem more appealing.

I’m all for pointing out a few spelling errors or typos to a candidate, but I draw the line at making major changes to a candidate’s resume in order to make them appear more attractive. 

Once again, hiring an RPO provider solves this pesky problem. A RPO provider acts as an internal part of a company’s team, and has no absolutely no interest or reason to alter candidates’ resumes.

4. Higher Salaries Get Priority

Recruitment agencies tend to give higher priority to higher paying jobs for the simple reason that their placement fees will be larger. There is a common saying in recruitment agencies: “work closest to the money”. 

Sometimes that means positions that they deem easier to fill, but oftentimes it means spending more time and energy on the jobs that will bring in a bigger payday.

As you can probably tell, this is a big issue for your company. 

5. Lack an Understanding of Your Company

One of the biggest challenges with using a recruiting agency is that you have many different clients, and thus don’t understand the culture and nuances of your company the way that you do.

You need to ensure that your recruited candidates are in line with your company culture and branding. 

So, regardless that most candidate pools are accessible by anyone, the person or team looking through the pool needs to be positioned to screen for culture fit.

Don’t Hire A Recruitment Agency. Consider An RPO

And the good news for you is that we have the best RPO services on the market. 

You can view some of our services here.

And if you want any specific questions answered, reach out to our team today. 

These are some of the negatives to working with a recruitment agencies. Hopefully I’ve been able to bring to light some of the more important thought processes when considering how to hire your next candidates.