New post by me over at the 6Talent blog:

“Many organisations are doing their own hiring today because they don’t want to pay fees to agents. Many brands and businesses big and small have had bad experiences with, or feel they haven’t got value for money from, an agency and I can understand that – sadly there are many bad eggs out there and that will always be the case. Very few arguments any better than the fees one have really found their way to me and it is often the only factor against them wanting to do business. My question is, why use your own time to search for and hire people when you can partner up with a consultancy and let them help you to grow? Hiring is a skill that everyone thinks they are great at but the facts simply don’t bear this out. And getting it wrong is a huge expense, whether you have found staff yourself or not. The true cost of recruitment can be £000’s and if you make poor hiring decisions as you’re learning how to do it on your own these costs just get larger and larger.

If you have staff within your team who are key administrators or are in HR and have a bucketload of everyday work to do, is it really a cost-effective use of their time to also try to do your hiring? And if you’re a small business owner with a to-do list as long as your arm, is it really the best use of your time to be trawling LinkedIn when you could be doing chargeable work and driving new business into your firm? If you need a website, you go and get one built for your business by an agency that knows how it’s done, rather than asking your team to have a go. If you need a new car, you don’t buy it from Ford directly, you go via a dealer, and so on, BUT in each case you are paying a price and the same applies to searching for and delivering talent.

A good consultancy providing talent is a partner to your operation and is putting a great message about your business out there for all to see, promoting you at every opportunity. A good consultancy gives you market knowledge and keeps you up to speed on your industry and knows as much about it as you do. And – the big one – a great consultancy helps you make the right decision on a candidate. They help you to find the right talent for your team and assist on the process of recruitment as well as simply handing over CVs – they have this at the heart of their operating model as it’s the only thing that works. It builds a stronger relationship, strengthens the partnership and makes the process of growth so much easier for your business. You can then stick to the things that make you money and keep doing what you do best.