by Andrew Meehan, Principal Recruitment Lead: IT Infrastructure/Security at Abrivia Recruitment
Looking at the market from a holistic level it seems that organisations have started to rely much less on recruitment agencies to fill roles. The growth of in-house teams is on the up as businesses give the HR function the mandate of direct channel recruitment. Companies that have invested in in-house recruitment teams as a result appear reluctant to also invest in recruitment agencies. It’s thought that in-house recruiters can access high calibre candidates and as a result fill all of their open positions. But, on the same turn recruitment agencies reporting strong results and seeking to grow out their own teams.
It has been forecasted for quite some time now of the decline of agencies due to the above change in approach, growing competition from job boards, and the increasing prevalence of social networking via say the LinkedIn platform. Despite that agencies continue to offer an important route for sourcing the best and most of the time dormant talent. Not only do agencies locate and stimulate candidates to seek a new career, they also help that talent become hireable in terms of interview preparation and follow through.
When going direct organisations are dealing with applicants, which in my experience, the majority of them will not be a fit for the exacting requirement despite having a very good skillset. Filtering, assessing, matching, communicating with the applicants, and managing the candidate experience will use up valuable in-house resources. A partnered agency should mean that you only get visibility on fully vetted and qualified candidates and not applicants.
I still believe that HR and internal teams regard agencies as their eyes and ears for what is going on in market. Market trends/pay scales, competitor activity, and candidate activity (where the person is interviewing) is a much valued proposition and proposition that is owned by the agency. Now that talent acquisition is back high on the agenda of most organisations a collaborative approach to recruitment is what is needed. I completely get it that organisations may need to decrease their spend on recruitment, but the cost associated with a bad hire or not hiring a key role at all far outweighs this. Even the best in-house recruitment teams can gain added value from working with niche/specialist recruiters.
About the author
Andrew holds a Master’s Degree in Human Resource Management (MBS) coupled with a Degree in Accounting and Strategic Management (BA). Andrew is also a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD). He has over 5 years recruitment experience in the IT infrastructure industry. At Abrivia Andrew provides holistic IT infrastructure recruitment solutions to existing and new client organisations. He would have previously successfully placed C-level straight down to technical level 1 grade professionals. Across chiefly the financial services, software, supply chain, manufacturing, and consulting industries. His technical expertise would cover Microsoft, Linux, Virtualisation, Storage, Cisco, HP, and dev op
related technologies. Andrew has also written a number of published articles in the Irish Times Connected magazine around IT in Ireland, IT recruitment and a number of technical pieces.
He was also published in the Business and Technology 100 magazine 2015 for an article he wrote about on the Internet of Things (LOT).
