External Sources of Recruitment

When a services-providing company gets new clients, projects or undergoes changes in its organizational model, plans to diversify into other businesses, or implements new steps as per its vision statement, then the HRs often get the instructions to recruit people who can work as a part of the organization and help them realize their dream.

In such cases, the HRs have the responsibility to acquire talent within a small duration of time. Some of the most efficient and widely-adopted methods that are taken into consideration for the recruitment process are −

Campus Recruitment

HRs keep a record of the academic institutes that their top performers are alumni of. When they find that a particular college or university features prominently in the resumes of the candidates whom they select, they keep a note of it, and contact such colleges so that they can recruit the best talent before their competitors can.

The main advantage in campus recruitment is that the pool of candidates is wide and a vast array of deserving candidates may apply for the job. There are great opportunities of hiring potential winners with entry level salaries. However, the flip side is that the HRs can’t expect them to have any idea on the functioning of their organization, so they have to recruit them on the basis of their generic knowledge about the industry. This means that they have to rely on the semester scores of this candidates, instead of technical expertise.

Sometimes, even the HRs make mistakes and a candidate who showed great potential in the interviews reveals himself not quite up to the mark, or is found unable to do the job expected of him. This results in a negative turnover as the company had invested money, effort and time on the candidate and the candidate becomes unable to return the investments.

Contingent Staff

Certain staffing consultancies specialize in contingent staff or employees who, on an off-role basis, work on temporary assignments. They are equivalent to more typical contractual or freelancing agencies, except the fact that the candidates’ job profile is often more oriented to a specific specialization.

The employees in such cases report to their staffing firm, and not to the client company. The staffing firm takes care of all their remunerations, policies, feedback, and other formalities. Teachers, Lawyers, accountants, and other specialized consultants are some of the few examples.

Companies incorporate this option mainly while adjusting with seasonal trends stiff, spikes in business, national launches of products, or trade shows. They might ask a consulting firm to allocate a complete team for special one-off projects.

This process comes in handy when the company undertakes a short term project which is out of the expertize of the skill set possessed by the employees of the company. The contract-duration hardly extends more than a year, however there have been cases where companies have entered bond-agreements with many of such consultancy houses extending decades.

Online Job-oriented Websites

An uncountable number of websites are available across the internet who intend to advertise job openings, however their real business model is providing genuine talent and experience to companies, that’s why these sites are where thousands of candidates’ resumes come from. Websites like Naukri.com, Monster.com, and indeed.com are some of the most significant ones.

Most of the recruiters are well aware of these websites, and as a matter of fact, many companies have tie ups with these websites. It is up to the managers to decide which online agency is best suited for their requirements.

There are some websites that specialize in recruitments of a specific job profile. (For example: marketing jobs, human resources, engineers, project managers, accountants, etc.) One such website, www.theladders.com specializes in the recruitment of mid-managerial and higher management executives.

Recruitment Firms

The most significant advantage of incorporating a third party organization is that they have the ability to fill a position quickly from a pool of references that they have built and profiled over the years, which are otherwise inaccessible to companies, especially in a short time-period. They can also provide a services that are out of the extent of the company. Expenses may vary depending on agreements.

Generally, such firms work on three principles −

• Retained Search
• Contingency Search
• Engaged Search

Retained Search

Retained-search firms ask for an upfront fee for the candidates they select. Normally, these firms charge 30-33% of the annual salary package of the candidate, and are contacted to recruit people who can fit top-level managerial positions.

In a retained search, the upfront fee is paid for the time, efforts, expertise and logistics of the firm. Most of the times, the firm is responsible for the entire process of recruitment of the candidate beginning with the interviews right till the time he starts working.

Contingency Search

Firms employing contingency search are paid a pre-negotiated commission amount per candidate which they had had discussed and finalized with their employers. The payment is done only once the right accepts the position. Such recruiters earn 20% to 35% of the candidate's annual base salary.

Most firms are paid that commission on the first year’s base salary, however some highly successful firms may get 20% to 35% of the entire annual package, including the first bonuses.

Delimited or Engaged Search

Another form of high-management level candidate searching is known as Delimited Search or Engaged Search. It’s often confused with retained search because of the payment structure, however it differs from retained search in that while firms conducting retained searches practice a no-refund policy, in the case of engaged search, a firm has to refund the money back to its employer if it fails to hire someone worthy of employment into the desired designation.