Read this if you use recruitment agencies

1 - An alternative to recruitment agencies
2 - Saving money on recruitment agencies
3 - How can an applicant tracking system help me hire?

According to Technology Partners – more and more small businesses are relying on agencies for their recruitment activities. There may be times when using agencies are essential – particular if you are seeking fairly rare skills like IT.

But every business is going to need to tighten its belt before the year is out. There’s a good chance you want to avoid paying a premium for new staff via an agency – and you can source the same people directly through an applicant tracking system!

An alternative to recruitment agencies

Recently, our Talent Intelligence Unit published its second job market report for 2022. The statistics, data, and insights published within were collected from a sample of 28,000 vacancies and 10,000 candidates surveyed across 18 industry sectors – and what they learned from our clients may surprise you!

88% of applications were from outside the organisation. 7% of applications were internal, and just 5% of total applications were from recruitment agencies! When we look at candidates who were hired, the numbers don’t change too dramatically. 78% were external, 14% were internal, and just 6% were from agency hires.

What this tells us is that clients who use our recruitment software rely a lot less on agencies to do all of their hiring for them!

Saving money on recruitment agencies

According to our clients, the switch to our recruiting software – JTGO – has saved them both time and money, while keeping them in full control of the hiring process! Don’t just take our word for it, here’s what Isabel Odlin – Chief People Person at Hub – told us.

“Prior to JTGO, we sometimes used recruitment agencies for hiring, which would cost our business thousands of pounds in fees. With JTGO, we’ve now been able to implement a new recruitment strategy where we are not going to use agencies at all, which will save around £6-10K per hire!

This is mainly because of the advertising reach JTGO gives us. When I post a job as live it’s advertised much further than where it would have if I did it manually. For instance, our jobs are now posted automatically to Indeed and we’ve found some really great candidates through this channel.

That extra reach has been so successful that we’ve interviewed candidates that we definitely wouldn’t have seen if it wasn’t for JTGO! We’ve also found it useful if a candidate applies for one role but is actually more suited to another, as we can more easily manage that process.”

How can an applicant tracking system help me hire?

Our applicant tracking system lets you automate much of the hiring process, especially when it comes to advertising your job. This is critical to attracting candidates, but merely placing them on your own website will produce very limited traffic. Instead, you probably need to use job boards.

Did you know that this doesn’t need to be a cost burden? There are plenty of job boards that are free to use – Indeed being the largest and the cheapest option. If you want to post to Indeed and get in touch with them directly, you will inevitably be sold an advertising package. You will be advised that unless you pay for a premium package or sponsored listing, your job could disappear from view very quickly. This is potentially true, but is something that we think you can ignore!

People looking for jobs will go to job boards and search by their own filters – location; job type, salary etc. If your job is there, you will be presented as a match and candidates can then apply via your own website.

It’s as simple as that. Given that 45% of ALL candidates find jobs via Indeed, it really is a platform that is hard to ignore, but our ATS offers other options too so you can expand your reach.