Recruiters are well-positioned to help drive industry progress in today’s skill-short market. For many business leaders, recruitment has proven to be a major stumbling block in recent years, particularly now as digitalisation projects get underway.
It can be tough to know where (and when) to turn for outside help. Talent acquisition is a strategic imperative – here’s when to outsource.
Expanding into new markets
Hoping to make your mark in new territory? Recruitment is a vital aspect of any successful expansion, especially if you’re going to be operating in a new regulatory environment. A comprehensive knowledge of governance and local employment law is a must, otherwise, you risk non-compliance and a slew of operational threats.
It can take a long time to develop a solid understanding of cross-border regulatory frameworks (and the additional dynamic this creates for the talent market), and while you’ll naturally come across this as part of your expansion process, ground-level perspective and experience are both crucial and much harder to get.
Take Switzerland’s complex international recruitment laws for example – to recruit in Switzerland, the team here at Broadgate maintain cantonal and SECO licenses, enabling us to appoint cross-border talent in both a permanent and contract capacity.
Outsourcing to a fully licensed specialist with localised market knowledge can help you speed up the expansion process while improving the quality of your hire. Moreover, if you’re working to meet additional hiring targets, internal hiring managers will likely lack the kind of network needed to develop a diverse shortlist. External agencies should not have this challenge.
Risk Mitigation
The cost of a bad hire is fairly well-known, yet it’s not uncommon to find leaders woefully underprepared for the consequences. Estimates typically suggest that bad hires cost the business around three times their salary. As firms are increasingly forced to do more with less, risk mitigation becomes more important than ever.
Reducing the risk of a bad hire typically demands your most precious resources: time and money. When budgets get leaner and timeframes shrink, the pressure mounts on mission-critical hires, increasing the chance of finding the wrong fit.
While agencies can alleviate these pressures by creating instant access to a pre-vetted talent network, connections to world-class talent should be the bare minimum for a specialist recruiter. A great recruiter will be a subject-matter expert who can build lasting relationships with culture-add candidates, and is able to pinpoint niche skill sets in talent-short markets.
An Influx of Candidates
Broadly speaking, the market has completed the flip toward its employer-driven status, potentially spelling good and bad news for you and your hiring managers. As an employer, you might associate this kind of market with:
A stronger position in the salary negotiation process
More candidates to choose from
Improved flexibility
A reduced time to fill
This isn’t always the case however, particularly given the recent influx of applications we’re seeing on today’s market. It might seem like a great problem to have (and it is in some ways), but while the overall balance of power has shifted in favour of employers, the reality on the ground is often more complex. The sheer volume of applications creates its challenges, making it difficult to identify top talent efficiently.
An experienced agency can take care of the end-to-end process for you, from the market-mapping phase through to onboarding and everything else in between.
