Recruitment Agencies

[HRH2009]

I work as a bookkeeper to a few companies for my sins. A couple of them have in the past year used the services of expensive recruitment agencies, in both cases the individuals employed have proved to be unsuitable long term. One was a chef and the other was salesman in the IT world.

In both cases they were quite small companies and the fee approx £5000 was a big outlay.

I was wondering if other forum members have found recruitment agencies give value for money?

[scirocco265]

At work, we have a block policy on the use of agencies for a number of reasons; in the first instance, they are generally cost prohibitive. Secondly, they always claim to have researched the candidate, obtained references and interviewed them, but from my experience this is often not the case (in as high as 60% of cases). Thirdly, we have experienced issues where the agencies remain in contact with the subject and once the rebate period is over then poach them to go elsewhere.

Works for some, not fos us though...

[TurricanII]

There have been a few threads about agencies, searching for 'recruitment' there are a couple of long ones about costs and the fact that some agencies are poor

[edc]

Ignoring the fact that these individuals were sourced via agencies what is it that made them so unsuitable and why was this not identified before employment, during probation or during the contract rebate period?

[Chris_OCR]

To be honest, agency costs vary widely, some will try and charge huge fees, IE £5k for a chef....

Typically agencies try and go for 20% of basic salary, some work for much less than that (myself included).

You cannot blame the candidate is not suitable long term on the agency though that comes down to a poor interviewer/decision maker.