The movement of agency recruiters into in-house roles has been a common trend for a number of years. This year we have seen the tide turn in the other direction, with a number of long-standing in-house recruiters joining Beyond and experiencing the agency world for the first time. Their experience has been surprising.
The allure of an in-house role has long been a tempting siren for agency recruiters. We have seen just as many highly successful agency recruiters with great portfolios seek career growth in HR in the in-house world as we have seen those “over” the challenging agency life. Like many other recruitment agencies, Beyond has seen some of our good recruiters move to work internally.
Why agency appeals to some internal recruiters
The internal recruiters we have recently hired here at Beyond have moved to agency for common reasons. These are:
- An attraction to the idea of becoming known as a subject area expert in a market.
- Starting to love recruitment and seeking a larger dedicated recruitment environment, and the opportunities this creates.
- The opportunity to own and grow their own “business within a business.”
A successful, growing recruitment agency can offer these, whilst providing genuine rewards. Placing a great candidate into a role they otherwise may not have been aware of and seeing them go on to make a meaningful contribution to your client is very rewarding – just as it is when that candidate connects with you again to help them make their next career step. There is also the uncapped financial reward available in the agency world for the exceptionally valuable skill and talent required to be a great recruiter. It’s also social, a hell of a lot of fun, and even the smallest wins get accolades and are recognised by managers and peers alike.
Amusing assumptions
Our new ex-internal recruiters have relayed some amusing and naive assumptions about how they thought agencies worked. Visions of perfect candidates being identified at "the push of a button", temps waiting in reception to be sent on assignment, and various versions of "all agencies do is just send the CV" were common misconceptions.
The sheer investment in, and co-ordination of, people, marketing, social media, advertising, brand, premises, process, technology and more that enables a company like Beyond to quickly identify great talent for clients would be difficult to replicate. For example, every week, on average, we conduct face-to-face interviews with 260 new candidates that we have not met before. These candidates have already been phone-screened, so we know that they are of high calibre. This constant and current “talent-river” is available to all of our recruiters to dip into on their client’s behalf.
Come on in, the water’s fine
We enjoy many valuable and long-term partnerships with internal recruiters all over New Zealand and (to be frank) our job would be a lot harder without them. Maverick managers, unapproved job orders and documentation black-holes are now more a rarity than reality!
It’s encouraging to see that an agency career seems to be enjoying a renaissance, and having great recruiters with expert insight into the client side of the fence can only be positive for our industry. The door is open…
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