HR Recruitment Agencies - Why It's Important to Choose the Right HR Recruitment Agency When Job Hunting

Not all HR recruitment agencies are alike, and that's not just in terms of the level of service they give, it's also about the type of industry and role they are geared towards.

The role of a recruitment agency is to play middle man between clients and candidates and both sides use agencies for different reasons.

For clients i.e. companies, it could be they don't have the time or manpower to do it themselves, or perhaps that the position is very specialized or hard to fill and they need someone to search out candidates, or it could be they run some recruitment campaigns themselves but need extra help for more senior positions.

Candidates primarily use recruitment agencies to save time. It's much quicker to check out a few agency websites than to spend hours trawling through the job boards of twenty separate companies.

The bottom line is that the consultant / candidate relationship is a symbiotic one. Candidates need agencies so they can keep up to date with job opportunities, and agencies need candidates in order to fulfil their clients requests.

So if candidates needs agencies and agencies need candidates why does it matter which agency a candidate uses or which candidates an agency takes onto their books?

A recruitment agency lives or dies on the reputation of its recruitment consultants, and a consultant's reputation depends on correctly matching the right candidates to client opportunities.

Consultants who regularly send their clients unsuitable applicants won't last long in the game, and candidates who find themselves being put forward for unsuitable vacancies will soon look for another consultant.

Consultants get the best results when they have built up a good working relationship with their clients, and have a good working knowledge of their clients sector -- which is why hr recruitment consultants often specialise in a certain area, for example hospitality or banking.

By specializing they can learn much more about the sector, and therefore have a better chance of getting the client / candidate match correct.

If you're looking for a job in HR it makes sense to find the agencies and consultants who deal in the sectors you are interested in. They will be much better placed to interpret your skills and help you find your next position. To do this all you do do is search the job boards, and you'll often find an agency will be advertising various roles in the same sector e.g. professional services.

This is a difficult one, mainly because you're likely to see many different jobs advertised by many different agencies and often applying for a job means registering with the agency.

However, there's a difference between getting your details registered because you sent a CV through, and building a long term relationship with a recruitment consultant or agency that you want to utilise to help plan your career.

There are no strict rules on these things. For geographical or sector reasons you are likely to need to build relations with more than one, but trying to maintain more than 3 agencies on a long term basis will probably be a challenge.

The short answer is you need to register with as many or few as it takes to make you feel that you've got your bases covered.

Keep searching until you do - there are plenty out there.

Seriously though, one of the biggest complaints leveled against recruitment agencies is their failure to keep in touch and their failure to keep candidates informed.

You need to be realistic, your consultant is a busy person and like it or not they are working in a sales based role. If they don't get clients or don't fill those clients requirements they don't get paid, and in a tough job market they are having to work harder than ever just to survive.

That is not to say they shouldn't be keeping in touch, but it would unrealistic to expect daily or even weekly phone calls - fortnightly calls or emails is a much more realistic aim, and it's as much your responsibility as theirs. The question to ask yourself, is whether you feel confident that they are working hard on your behalf to find you a job -- if the answer is yes then let them get on with it, if the answer is no, vote with your feet.

Recruitment agencies don't ask you to keep them informed of when you've found work for fun. It's a waste of their time to be searching for an HR job for you if you've already found something.

Keep them in the loop with what you're doing and they'll be ready to pick up again once you're ready for your next move.

HR recruitment agencies have a hard job, but it's no picnic for all those searching or a job in HR either. The most successful candidate / agency relationships are the ones where both parties work together to achieve the same goal i.e. correct placement candidates with clients. Like all relationships the candidate / agency one needs to be nurtured and taken care of. Failure by either side to do that will lead to dissatisfaction, so next time you're annoyed that your consultant hasn't been in touch remember it's a two way street and drop them an email to make sure you stay in the forefront of their mind.