Recruiters: Are they really worth your money?

I left the world of Learning and Development projects in July 2012, to head into recruitment, so I could free my time up to help upskill the industry. Having come from a reasonably prestigious title of Instructional Designer, I was shocked to learn that Recruiters rated down there with real estate and car salesmen.

Recruiting however lets me find my flow. Instead of spending 10 hours a day behind a computer designing (e) learning, I now spend all week as a recruiter connecting and meeting with talented L&D people, helping them find contract or permanent work. I get to hear about and talk about the latest L&D trends, tools and technology.

Many of New Zealand’s largest organisations have internal recruitment teams and therefore, roles are advertised via the usual channels (Seek and Trademe) first.

Where recruiters come in is twofold:

1. Where these organisations cannot find anyone or anyone of interest. Bloom Learning Solutions has a network of  people we know are open to opportunities, but not necessarily actively looking.  Therefore they will miss the Seek ads. As a recruiter, we can ‘shoulder tap’ them.
2. Where time is of the essence. We also know the great contractors in the market. People who could (if not already working)  start at the drop of a hat.

We also help people like Vanessa Merit Nornberg of Metal Mafia. She cut her recruitment time down from 5 months to 1 month, realising the true cost of recruitment when doing it herself was a lot more than the cost she paid a recruiter to do so for her. Check out Metal Mafia’s case study here.

So if you cannot find the right person, need some one now, or  don’t have the time to follow a robust recruitment process, maybe a recruiter is a good choice for you.  If you worked out your hourly rate of scrolling through cv’s, screening and interviewing candidates, the stress of not getting your day job done etc, vs paying a recruiter who is likely to have a database they can tap into, you may be surprised!  A recruiter might just be worth your money!

But then, I guess I am now biased!