3 Reasons Why Recruitment Could Benefit from Agency Partnerships

Let’s set the scene…

You have a new role in a rapidly growing department that you’re looking to fill, and five agencies that could take on the role. Your next step might be to schedule a half-hour call with each agency to brief them and, from there, the race starts. 

Not only are you recruiting for one role, in one department, but as a Hiring Manager or Director, you are tasked with recruiting for multiple specialisms across STEM. Each specialist agency you work with pursues candidates via their database, with some candidates being approached multiple times by several different agencies. These agencies often fail to communicate a consistent employee value proposition (EVP) that is unique, relevant, and compelling to your business, resulting in a poor candidate experience that can damage your brand’s image. 

This approach is far too common across recruitment and can harm candidate experience, limit the potential of cultural fit and increase the likelihood of making a mis-hire, all while consuming much more time than you’d expect as you juggle the multiple points of contact.

A great solution for STEM businesses with a variety of specialist roles across science, tech and engineering is to engage with a recruitment partnership. This is where a group of specialist agencies join forces to provide one holistic service to minimise costs and accelerate the hiring process. As the client, you get access to multiple specialist consultants in one place and reduce time to manage agencies, leaving you more time to focus on screening, interviewing and onboarding the right people. 

In this article, I’ll explore three reasons why recruitment in STEM needs to change, and how leaders can leverage recruitment partnerships to better empower candidates and Hiring Managers alike. 

Expect to discover:

• How to establish a streamlined recruitment process 
• How to shorten time-to-hire
• How to limit recruitment costs

How to establish a streamlined recruitment process

STEM businesses are matrixes of logistics, manufacture, research, and development. 

Meanwhile, the recruitment industry for the most part often falls into silos. While many agencies have the specialist teams necessary for select industries, and even niche positions, the breadth of roles that it takes to power a STEM business often surpasses capabilities. This leads organisations to approach a multitude of recruitment providers to meet their requirements and leaves HR departments with a complex network of contacts and payrolls to manage.

In STEM recruitment partnerships, a recruitment company utilises connections across wider industries to take on recruitment across departments, enabling a single point of contact process that minimises HR time commitment. The partnership may work with specialist scientific, tech and engineering agencies, with the process simplified through one main point of contact. These agencies also work in partnership to build a consistent and quality EVP for your business, building your reputation in the industry.  

How to shorten time-to-hire

Time to hire in traditional recruitment processes is heightened by a competitive candidate market, where duplicate applications are rife. Candidates are faced with more opportunities than ever and are often interviewing for multiple roles at the same time. This results in a higher frequency of dropouts, lost time for hiring managers and recruiters, and an overall increase in time to hire.

Recruitment partnerships combat this by establishing a high-quality candidate list, limiting dropouts and the number of overall interviews. Recruitment partners have the scope to represent your brand, and consistently represent your company, its EVP, and the role. This leads to a greater number of passive applicants and engaged candidates, who feel connected and engaged with your company. 

Recruitment partners activate a sense of continuity, enabling your hiring managers to move away from starting from scratch every time a new role becomes available. Unlike traditional interim recruitment services, recruitment partners develop a nuanced understanding of ideal candidate profiles for company culture. This means they recommend similarly skilled candidates for newly available vacancies and vastly reduce the overall time to hire. 

For example, a recent client of mine in the Chemical industry found that they had been relying on multiple agencies for specialist engineers, back-office admin, and floor workers, before realising that SRG had the scope to take on that recruitment under their parent company, Impellam, as a recruitment partnership. We were able to work out total hire amounts, cost-per-hire, and develop a monthly invoice to help manage recruitment spend.

We also established a refund policy, where we provide refunds and enable alternative recruitment options for any roles that we can’t fill within the partnership. This model enabled a more streamlined and efficient process both internally for the client’s HR, and for candidates who now received a consistent and convincing EVP.

How to limit recruitment costs and reduce cost-per-hire

Research from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation reveals that 3 out of 5 hires made in the UK are mis-hires. What’s more, despite 85% of HR decision-makers admitting to making a bad hire, a third of decision-makers believe that hiring mistakes come at no cost to the business. 

In reality, hidden costs across recruitment involve money wasted on induction, training, lost productivity and increased staff turnover, generating a total loss of £132,000 for a mid-managerial position alone. 

So, what drives mis-hires? 

A study from CareerBuilder suggests that a lack of cultural fit is a major cause. 37% of mis-hired employees in their study left as the job did not match the interview, or the listing description. An additional 33% left due to a lack of clear expectations for the role.

While contingent recruitment models rely on a ‘fastest-finger first’ model for candidate acquisition, recruitment partnerships involve nurturing candidates from previous recruitment projects, alongside new and passive candidates. This means each candidate is thoroughly screened, receives a consistent and accurate representation of the role and the organisation’s EVP, and that clients get higher quality candidates for their money.

What’s more, by utilising personality profiling, video interviews and a dedicated Account Manager for the entirety of the recruitment project, recruitment partnerships activate a much more accurate, and reliable hiring process and avoid the cost of mis-hiring employees or delayed recruitment.

How SRG uses recruitment partnerships

SRG is a part of Impellam Group, the UK’s largest staffing business, and the sixth-largest MSP worldwide, connected to 16 other brands across the global world of recruitment. Our global presence, extensive talent network and over 20 years of experience enable us to meet the unique requirements of every business we partner with.

As Client Solutions Manager, I empower clients across SRG to draw on our wider branches of recruitment services owned by Impellam to power their complete recruitment strategy in a holistic way.

We often work in partnership with Impellam’s brands, Lorien on tech recruitment, and Carbon 60 on engineering roles. 

We ensure a single point of contact for clients while maintaining a specialist recruitment approach. The partnership model also means limiting time to hire by leveraging an established relationship with both clients and candidates, on top of curbing the potential of mis-hires and escalating recruitment costs.

Do you have a variety of STEM roles, and are interested in hearing more about how a recruitment partnership works? Contact Chris to discuss how it could work for your organisation: solutions@srgtalent.com

About the author: Chris Percival is Client Solutions Manager at SRG. Chris is a highly personable individual who takes the time to understand your business and business needs. Chris knows that there is no such thing as a “one size fits all” recruitment solution, offering a bespoke service offering that integrates seamlessly with your current processes.