Recruitment software, social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, and even the ever-reliable job boards are all great tools for finding new prospective employees. However, they mean little unless they're in the hands of a skilled recruitment professional. These tools are not a replacement for a talented and well-connected executive recruitment agency; rather, they are used by your recruiter in order to help you find the perfect fit more quickly than in the past. Chances are, you're not trained in recruiting - and even if you have done it in the past, it's unlikely that you can spare the time to do it properly now! An unhealthy economy means that you should be focusing on your everyday tasks now more than ever in order to make sure your company grows and prospers - and that means taking time out of your day to look for new job recruits is out of the question. Instead, hire the services of an executive recruitment agency to do the dirty work for you. Their skills and experience will enable you to find the new executive you need - and may even help you avoid financial catastrophe!

One of the most notable trends in recruiting right now is the apparent decline of the job board. Job boards have been one of the best ways to find new talent for your company for years; now, however, many employers are noting that they plan to decrease their spending (and, in turn, their presence) on these employment websites. Why? Quite simply, the boards have been flooded by job seekers and their resumes, and many recruiters feel that it's too difficult to sift through all of the possibilities to find the most promising leads. A great prospect on a job board has been the proverbial needle in a haystack!

Instead, many recruiters are turning to social recruiting, a hot new online employment trend. Any executive recruitment agency worth its salt is already well acquainted with the various social networking sites and how they can be used to fill positions, from entry- to executive-level. Social recruiting allows the employer to get a better picture of the prospect's personality and his or her work history as a whole, rather than focusing on mere words on a page.

Finally, many recruiters are citing the popularity of cultural compatibility as a factor in hiring. Gone are the days when a man or woman could count on their resume or copious work experience guaranteeing a job offer; now, employers want new hires who share their values, ambitions and the general demeanor of the company at large. Choosing a candidate who is culturally compatible makes the transition easier - and more prosperous - for everyone involved.

1. Detailed knowledge of your industry. Usually, the best recruiters have a solid background in the industry or field of their choice. If they haven't work in the field firsthand, then you can be sure that they have trained and studied extensively. They should also be up to date on the latest trends in the marketplace.
2. A large network of industry contacts. Professional recruiters do not merely post an ad on the job boards and wait for the responses to roll in; instead, they draw on their list of contacts to find individuals who may be well-suited for the position in question, even if they're not officially "looking" for work. This will give you the edge you need to find the absolute best person for your executive-level job.
3. Great listening and people skills. Your recruiter should be able to understand, communicate and interact with both you and potential prospects alike. A timid, introverted person may not be the ideal executive recruiter simply because a large part of the job involves approaching people, speaking to them, and reading between the lines.
4. An understanding of social networking sites. Social recruiting is the wave of the future - make sure your recruiter is well versed in MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in order to obtain the best results.

Low Number of Requirements

Whether you hire a contingency executive search firm or a retained search firm, your monetary obligation to it is over as soon as the process of recruitment is complete. Each executive recruitment agency will charge in the range of 10% to 35% of the candidate’s expected Cost to Company (CTC) for the first year. This may seem a little steep, but in the long run, this one time cost works out to be a lot cheaper than maintaining a recruitment department within your own organization as long as the number of requirements in your organization is along regular norms.

Approaching Sensitive Candidates

At very high levels within the organization there are very few people in the industry who meet the exact requirement of the job. Most of these candidates are well known to everyone within the industry, but approaching them with your vacancy may be a very sensitive issue. Such high level vacancies are usually kept confidential to prevent loss of reputation and any potential threat from competition, who may take advantage of the situation. The candidates for such positions can hardly be contacted directly by the company and executive recruitment agencies come in very handy as intermediary in such cases. An executive recruitment agency would ascertain the interest of the candidate before revealing the name of your organization.

Out of Town Candidates

Recruitment firms are also very useful when you want to hire out of town candidates. If you are looking for an out of town candidate, it can be very expensive to fly potential candidates back and forth through the entire recruitment process. Recruitment firms can do the screening of every potential candidate at out of town locations before the send the best of the lot to you. Most executive recruitment agencies have more than one branch and it is also easier for a recruiting firm to fly one of their industry experts to the location to screen potential candidates than for you to fly every candidate to your office.

Resume Verification and References

In today’s troubled times, there are a number of desperate people who exaggerate their skills, education or experience in order to be considered for a well paying job. And, an unverified employee can pose a serious threat to the well being of the company, its employees, its customers and its reputation. One of the methods of acquiring background information and conducting resume verification for a potential candidate is to hire a third party resume verification firm. But why incur that expenditure when recruitment firms offer this service as part of their consultancy? An executive recruitment agency offers to verify the education, experience and references of the potential candidates on behalf of their clients.

Cost to Company

If you are a company whose recruiting needs are with the regular range and are not excessively high, the first major disadvantage of not using an executive recruitment agency is the high cost of maintaining an in house recruitment department. While recruitment firms charge in the range of 10% to 35% of candidate’s annual Cost To Company for the first year, it is still only a one time cost and far less than the cost of running your own recruiting department. On the other hand, the services provided by executive recruitment agencies will ensure that your senior managers do not get involved in the task of sifting through resumes and screening of candidates, but are only involved in the evaluation and interview stage. This can also have huge monetary repercussion on the bottom line of a company.

The ‘No Poaching’ Clause

When a company hires an executive recruitment agency to fulfill its recruiting needs, the recruitment firm agrees to not poach people from that company for the duration of the contract. This means that the recruitment firm will not recommend employees from your company to other firms within the industry. However, if you do not work with any recruitment firm, you are leaving the employees of your company exposed to the poaching from them. This, of course, does not mean that you sign a contract with every recruitment firm in your vicinity, but it would be prudent to have the market leaders within your industry on your side.

Industry Knowledge and Gossip

Recruitment firms are in constant touch with a large number of candidates across any industry. They build strong personal relationship with candidates and are able to get a lot of industry information and gossip from them. This can be very useful for any company that hires an executive recruitment agency. For instance, if you have the inside knowledge that a particular department of a company is about to close down, you will know that the employees of that department will soon be looking for a job and their salary expectation may be highly negotiable given their position.

Confidentiality

This is another huge disadvantage faced by companies who do not want to use the services of recruitment firms. On one hand, every vacancy they have will be publicized and this could mean loss of reputation in the case of very senior level placements and also leaves the company at risk from competitor’s tactics to take advantage of this situation. If you use a recruitment firm, whether it is an executive search firm or a retained search firm, you can expect them to keep information of vacancies in your company confidential until after potential candidates have been screened and evaluated. On the other hand, hiring recruitment firms also helps attract those candidates for whom confidentiality is paramount.

Fine Tuned Results

In today’s time of economic crisis where so many people are rendered jobless everyday, one ad in the newspaper can draw thousands of qualified and unqualified resumes. The man hours required to sift through all this data and select those resumes that suit your requirement perfectly could cost your organization a lot of time and money. On the other hand, if you hire an executive recruitment agency to fill the vacant positions in your organization, you will only have to choose your employee from the very best of the qualified resumes. You can focus your energies on screening and evaluating a handful of candidates instead of having to sift through piles and piles of resumes.

Reducing the Role of Managers

In most cases, even if you do have a recruiting department in your organization, they are not necessarily equipped to screen candidates for all the functions within the organization. It is usually the senior managers who are required to screen candidates to see who amongst them have the required skill set to fit into the required position. Recruitment firms, on the other hand, are capable of doing this initial screening for you if you require them to since they have to be experts in their industry niche. The role of the senior manager can be restricted to only evaluating the results and interviewing candidates who have made it past the screening.

Salary Negotiation with Candidates

This is a very important role played by recruitment firms. If there are any kinks or problems on either side, as an intermediary, recruitment firms can help resolve issue and reach a closure. This is especially useful in salary negotiations. Executive recruitment agencies are very knowledgeable about industry standards with regard to compensation package. They can help you set a reasonable and competitive compensation packages for the vacant positions in your organization and they also help convince the candidate to accept it.

Other Services provided by a Recruitment Firm

It is important for any company to avoid desperate job seekers who exaggerate their employment history to get a well paying job. A recruitment firm can offer you the services of doing reference checks with past employers of potential candidates to ensure that you get a well qualified person for the opening in your organization. A recruitment firm will also verify salary details of potential candidates to ensure that they are not demanding an unreasonable hike in their expected salary. Norms change from industry to industry, but a candidate can expect a higher salary in his new job in most cases and it becomes important to ensure that the current salary figures of an applicant are not inflated.

Setting the Right Salary Package

While the job profile for an open position is decided by the senior manager handling that function, the salary compensation package is more often than not the creation of the HR manager. Unfortunately, an HR manger cannot be expected to have expert industry knowledge, especially with regard to salary package for each and every function of an organization. For instance, an HR manager of a pharmaceutical company may not know the industry standards of the programming industry even though he may be recruiting a programmer for his organization. A recruitment firm will help set you the right salary packages for different position based on its expert knowledge of the industry.

Setting the Right Designation

Similar to their role in setting the right salary package, executive recruitment agency can help set the right designation for a required job profile. A functional manager will provide the job profile, but given the importance of designation in any industry, it is important that the right designation is assigned to a job profile to attract the right kind of candidates from the industry. A recruiting company can also wrinkle out any problems arising out of different designations systems across different companies in the industry. For instance, in one company the person reporting directly to the manager may be called an assistant manager; in some other firm he may be called an Associate Consultant. An executive recruitment agency will know differences and similarities among all designation systems in the industry.

Alternative Industries

In the event that you have created a new role within the organization and are unable to find people in your industry to fill the position, a recruitment firm will be able to provide you with advice on which other industry you can target to get the right kind of people for the vacancy in your organization. Executive recruitment agencies have expert knowledge of the industry they work in as well as peripheral industries that are associated with them. A recruitment firm will help you bring in qualified people from other industries that you or your company may not have expert knowledge of.

Company Interest

Recruitment firms will keep in mind your company’s interests in trying to find the right candidate. Over a period of time a strong relationship is formed between a company and the recruitment firms it hires and this works in the advantage of the company. You can depend upon an executive search firm to ensure that the right candidate is acquired for the company, whereas a retained search firm can be counted upon to be discreet in their enquiries for a potential candidate where company confidentiality is important, especially in the case of senior level recruitment.

Consultancy

An executive recruitment agency would have to have in-depth knowledge about the roles, positions, designations and compensation packages at all levels within the industry. Not only do they hale you in finding the right candidate for a vacancy in your company, they can also help you create a package that will attract the best talent for that function. Recruitment firms can advise you on the designation and salary package best suited for your requirement based on the job role required of the candidate.

Guarantee
Recruitment firms offer you a free replacement guarantee in the event that a candidate placed by them leaves the organization within a stipulated period of time. This time period is usually 3 months. If a candidate placed by an executive recruitment agency in your organization leaves before 3 months, the recruitment firm is obliged to provide you with a replacement of the candidate at no cost to you. If you were not using a recruitment firm, you or your recruiting department would again have to start from step 1 in looking for the next potential candidate and will have to repeat the entire process. This is not only time-consuming, but it is likely to adversely affect the job role in question.

Reach

A large number of companies consider having small, remote teams to expand their business. There may not be full fledged branches, but there is still requirement of qualified representatives of the company in different parts of the country or even the world. Not having branches can be a huge drawback when you need to go through the entire recruitment process on your own. You are likely to find it both time-consuming and expensive, and you are not even guaranteed success in your venture. On the other hand, executive recruitment agencies have a wide network of contact within the industry and can be very useful in handling remote recruitment. A global retained search firm will be able to provide you with candidates anywhere across the world. You may even consider using local recruitment firms in different locations of your requirement to fulfill your recruitment needs.

Risk

In the case of a contingency executive search firm, the entire business risk with regard to placing a candidate in your organization falls on the executive recruitment agency. If the recruitment firm is unable to place a candidate in your company, they do not get paid anything for the effort they put towards the placement. If you need a large number of people or if your requirement is difficult to fill, you can easily hire a number of contingency recruitment firms to look for the right candidate. You will get a wide variety of choice among suitable candidates and yet will only have to pay the one recruitment firm that has made the placement.