THE HIRE AUTHORITY
In 2001, however, there is no doubt that recession hit the UK, which saw a load of redundancies within the Advertising & Marketing sector including some prominent London agencies and we heard the words all recruitment professionals dread: "Recruitment Freeze" and "Project on Hold" as marketing budgets were slashed. Even in Direct Marketing, an area I always believed to be blast proof, there seemed to be a down turn. Other large organisations saw re-structure after re-structure and lost marketing staff through natural wastage.
I'm glad to say that the economy seems to have stabilised and the sector is cautiously confident once more. However, there still remains the need for costs to be low and within recruitment it means that our service has to be more focussed.
Far from being a necessary evil, a good recruitment consultancy shouldn't been seen as mere "paper brokers" i.e. shuffling CVs from one place to another. A genuinely talented recruitment organisation should be able to provide complete recruitment solutions as a partner working along side their client. Let's think about the worst case scenario for the client: You spend a fair amount of money advertising a position for a Marketing Manager and receive 150 responses. Why should you waste precious management time and man hours sifting through an unfeasibly large amount of CVs only to find a 2 - 4% suitability rate? By the time you've rejected the 96% and fitted in first interviews, your ideal candidate may have just accepted another role. Basically, you've just given yourself one big headache! A preferable alternative to this surely is to liaise with your recruitment agency who will co-ordinate your branded advertising (at a discounted rate, of course) and take the entire response. Along with an in-depth database search, you are then presented with a small number of pre-screened, pre-interviewed, pre-tested "spot on" candidates who have been through most of the personnel processes most Marketing Managers don't have the time or the inclination to observe. By using your recruitment partner as an out-sourced HR function you really are receiving good value for money and in the longer term, keeping your costs lower than the quick fix DIY recruitment. And at the end of the day, lower costs = happy boss! You know it makes sense!