Top 10 key benefits to using a professional recruiter within the management and technical recruitment market

What Impact is Social Media having on the industry?

Technology is advancing at a phenomenal rate and this is having an impact on the way we live and work. Social media tools and on-line job boards have had a big impact on the Recruitment Industry globally. As a result, I am often asked whether this is the end of the recruitment industry as it exists today and why would companies use a recruiter to source staff if they have all of these tools available at their desks?

The global reach of social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter should allow savvy companies to open the floodgates for highly skilled candidates. As a result, the role of the recruiter should be diminishing in terms of relevance. However, this is not the case. We are seeing a significant growth in the recruitment industry.

Statistics

A 2014 survey of the £26.5 billion sector has shown that 69% of recruitment companies surveyed were reporting an increase year on year in fee income. 65% of companies planned to open more offices with many looking at global expansion. This would work against the social media sourcing logic outlined above. So what is it that is driving the growth?

Many companies have chosen to outsource their recruitment activities to specialist agencies, they have also moved contract labour to the recruitment sector for ease of management and the shortage of key technical skills is making it harder to find top class professional candidates. The race for talent is very competitive across the multinational and large scale indigenous sector as the open positions exceeds the available, suitable talent.

This combination of factors in my view leaves plenty of room for recruitment companies to not only survive, but continue to grow and develop. The key for the recruitment companies is that they have to adapt to changing technology and the market their in, to survive and thrive.

Recruiters need to embrace change and continue to emphasise why there will always be a role for those companies that are nimble enough to navigate the market.

So what are the Top 10 key benefits to using a professional recruiter within the management and technical recruitment market?

1. The recruitment company will invest in all of the social media platforms to optimise usage and to arm the recruiter with the best arsenal of tools available
2. The recruiter will be an expert at usage of online media tools to source the star candidates
3. Firms will still use the job boards to set up the initial contact – the skill of the recruiter is to convert that contact to a placement at a client
4. An established recruiter will have a large network of contacts from working similar positions and within their candidate database
5. The professional recruiter will have established links to relevant industry associations and networks that will unearth latent talent
6. The recruitment company should be able to source candidates who are not active in the market and make the technical and cultural link up to the client – they are the sales arm of the client
7. The hiring process is complicated and it is about finding and handholding star performers through the many recruitment steps required
8. Recruitment companies can also make approaches and sell the company in a hands-off style that may not be possible for in-house groups
9. The ultimate benefit of recruitment is that the client secures a top class candidate that would not have been found otherwise in a short timeframe that results in a benefit to the company
10. As the market grows, skills become more difficult to source and the nature of the contract worker changes, there will continue to be a role for the professional recruiter.

Article by Ken Murphy, Director, CareerWise Recruitment

Joe Robbins

(Director) BBS (Hons), MBPICS – Shannon Office

Joe Robbins is co-founder of CareerWise Recruitment. A graduate of the University of Limerick (Degree in Business Studies, 1985), Joe worked in the UK for five years where he specialised in materials management, production management and plant management for a number of companies.

He returned to Ireland in 1992 to become Operations Manager for a Cork-based start-up, FMC Automotive Division which was subsequently taken over by Snap-on Equipment. Joe managed the business re-location of this company to Shannon in 1997 before setting up CareerWise Recruitment in 1999.

He is a committee member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) Mid-West region, and a former Director and Vice President of the Shannon Chamber of Commerce. Joe is former Chairperson of the Sixmilebridge Camogie Club and current Chairperson of the Clare County Camogie Board.

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