Recruitment processes are taking too long, according to new research from TalentPuzzle, the online recruitment marketplace. 86% of the business owners and HR staff surveyed admitted that that they would like to spend less time dealing with recruitment processes and agencies, especially as the majority (88%) of them are saying they would be looking to make a significant number of permanent hires over the next six months.
“Currently employers are caught in a catch 22 situation when it comes to recruitment,” commented Virginia Raemy, CEO. “Employers recognise the importance of recruiting the right people, however many simply don’t have the time to properly devote to recruitment. Ultimately, they can be dealing with dozens of agencies for a single advertised position, which means multiple contracts, multiple fees and multiple negotiations all of which can be very time-consuming.”
Typically, employers will initially engage with recruitment agencies in order to try and reduce their recruitment burden. However, the reality is that they can invest a lot of time with an agency only to receive CVs that don’t meet their requirements, meaning that they can be faced with having to source additional agencies, which again can be very time-consuming. Nearly three-quarters of the organisations surveyed said that they found it difficult to find good recruitment agencies.
Due to time constraints organisations will still only work with a handful of recruitment agencies as opposed to the hundreds in the market. This on the one hand might make managing the different recruitment agencies easier, but on the other it can limit the talent pool they are recruiting from. 73% of the respondents admitted that because of lack of time they were limiting their recruitment pool and missing out on potentially good candidates.
Particularly in the current climate there is a big emphasis on candidate quality and time to hire. Therefore, it is clear that recruitment agencies need to continue to raise their standards while employers need to be smarter about how they engage with them. 86% of organisations said that if they were able to more effectively source the best recruitment agencies it would result in less hassle and improve the quality of their hires.
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“Employers want to continue working with recruitment agencies, however up until now it has been quite difficult for them to quickly identify the best or most suitable. By using a recruitment marketplace such as TalentPuzzle, organisations can easily rate the performance of individual agencies based on the quality of CVs submitted and their responsiveness. This crowd-sourcing approach to rating agencies can help organisations quickly identify the best or most appropriate agencies to work with,” added Virginia Raemy.
The survey of 250 business owners and HR staff at UK organisations, with up to 750 employees, was commissioned by TalentPuzzle and conducted by independent research company Vanson Bourne.
