7 Key Benefits of Outsourcing Recruitment

Whether you're hiring yourself or have an in-house HR team, outsourcing your recruitment process or parts of it can benefit your company and even save you money. After all, getting the right people on your team is one of the crucial steps for any successful business.

In this blog post, we’ll talk about outsourcing recruitment and the ways it can benefit your company. We'll also mention situations when you might not want to outsource recruitment.

Ready? Let’s go!

What is recruitment outsourcing?

Outsourcing recruitment means handing over your recruitment process or a specific recruiting task an external partner. Depending on your needs, you can hire a recruitment agency or a freelance recruiter.

What are the benefits of outsourcing recruitment?

You are struggling to fill a specific role, you've got many positions and little time, or you just can't afford to hire an in-house recruitment team. Whatever it is, getting outside help will help you get the job done. Outsourcing means your team can get on-demand recruiting support. Let's see how your company can benefit from outsourcing recruitment tasks.

1. You can use recruiters’ know-how and local insights to your advantage when hiring abroad.

You have decided to hire abroad, but have no idea where to start? The biggest challenge is the experience and the know-how of hiring internationally, something many companies lack. Luckily, you can overcome these challenges by collaborating with an external partner who does have this knowledge and experience.

What regions should you start looking in and which channels should you use? Are there any regulations in place when it comes to hiring in a different country? These are just some (out of many) questions where a recruiter's expertise can be of great value. Piret Ploom, Head of People & Culture @Yolo Group explains:

When we opened a new business in Kyiv, Ukraine we also included some external agencies to help us with that. They know the local talent, they know the local job portals, all of that. So, it actually is more cost-efficient, saves us time and we will attract the right people much faster than by doing everything on our own.

Recruiters can also provide information about salaries in the region and might know what your competitors are offering. With this know-how, they can help you come up with an offer that both you and the candidate will be very happy with.

2. It can save you money.

External recruiters are only helping you when there is a need. Compared to a full time in-house employee, this can save you a significant amount of money. Recruitment costs can also include advertising, online job boards, tools and software. The costs can add up. When you outsource, you only have one cost to worry about - paying your external partner.

Although it is definitely not the only important benefit, a cost reduction often drives the decision when it comes to any type of outsourcing (70% of the time according to Deloitte).

It seems that the general rule is: outsourcing cuts costs. But, there are also exceptions to every rule. If you’re constantly hiring and have a large number of roles to fill, it might make more sense to hire an in-house recruiter. When you have hard-to-fill positions, you can hire external partners to assist your in-house recruiter.

Besides savings, you have added flexibility when it comes to payments. There are different pricing models in the recruitment industry. The main options include pay per hire, pay for time and pay for milestones.

Read more: Pricing Models in Recruitment: Flat, Retainer or Contingency

3. It will save you time.

Hiring can take up a lot of your time. Writing the job description, advertising, sourcing, screening and interviewing are all time-consuming tasks. By delegating this demanding process (or parts of it) to an experienced individual or agency, you are saving time. When you know a professional is focusing on these tasks, you can have peace of mind and use your time to focus on other important parts of your business. You can save a lot of time on some tasks where you don't have expertise (e.g. sourcing) but still participate in interviews where your point of view is valuable. This gives you the best of both worlds: control over the process and saving time.

This is also a huge benefit for your in-house HR. They might have their hands full with other tasks and not have enough time for diving deep into recruiting. By opening up a possibility to delegate part of the work, you're helping them be more efficient in their job.

4. You'll have access to candidates who might never apply to your job ad.

Job boards and ads do a great job for some roles. But, let's be real. If you're searching for rare talents, you might not find them there. There is a high probability executives and top talents are not actively applying for jobs. According to LinkedIn, 70% of the global workforce are passive candidates who aren’t actively job searching.

Enter talent sourcers. Recruiters have invaluable experience and often a large network. Using these advantages, they can find and convince passive candidates to join your team.

5. You'll be able to find the right person for a specialized role.

Filing a highly specialized position such as tech can be a daunting task. Spotting the right person for these roles requires an expert on the opposite side of the table. Someone who has deep knowledge about what type of candidate could excel in the role and has experience in recruiting similar roles.

It's not possible for executives or even in-house HR managers to have specific knowledge about every role. On the other hand, recruitment agencies and freelancers specialize in a certain industry (e.g. technology) or role (e.g. recruiting developers). This approach turns them into niche experts making it easier for them to achieve higher success rates.

💡 Extra tip: It is especially useful to have external help when it’s a completely new role for your company or it’s your first time hiring for that type of position.

6. You can accelerate recruitment.

According to LinkedIn, the average time to hire is more than 30 days. For some industries like engineering, the average is 49 days.

But, what if your business is growing rapidly and you need people fast? First of all, congrats! Now, let’s say you need 20 new employees to join your team. If this is the case, the know-how and efficiency of specialized recruiters can come in handy. Without some outside help, recruiting dozens of people could take you quite a long time.

When in a hurry or have many vacancies to fill, outsourcing recruitment may be your best (and sometimes the only) option.

7. Everyone can focus on what they do best.

Last but not least, with an external recruiter you’ll know candidates are in good hands and will be taken care of. This means you and everyone else in the company can focus on what they already do best. Sounds efficient! This is the benefit Brainbase highlights as the most important one.

I feel the biggest benefit for us (a company who does not have an internal Recruiter) has been that we can trust the recruitment activities are taken care of professionally and candidates are in good hands. On one hand, we know that the candidates are offered the best candidate experience: they're informed in a timely manner, they are approached with a personal touch and they feel important. And on the other hand, our Hiring Managers are being supported throughout the recruitment process. It lets us focus on the things we do best and we can let our recruitment partner do what they do best.

Sirli Spelman, People & Culture Manager @Brainbase

When you shouldn't outsource recruitment

Is outsourcing always the solution? Of course not. Different situations need different types of recruiters.

If you are growing steadily over a long period of time and have many roles to fill each month, you'll probably end up hiring a full-time in-house recruiter at some point. Additionally, if you want to have complete control over your employer branding, outsourcing might not be the perfect fit. The first impression of the candidate will be based on contact with the recruiter and not with your company directly. On the other hand, many companies hire freelancers as "embedded recruiters" - contractors who are extended part of the in-house team, using company tools and processes.

To learn more, watch our webinar - Recruiting: When to use external help and when to expand your in-house team?

Find the right recruiter for your business

I hope this article dismissed any concerns you might’ve had about working with external recruiters and helped you gain insight on how they can help you grow your business.

All that is left is to find a recruiter. If you want to be matched with a verified recruiter based on your budget, location and role, we can help. Book a free 30-minute consultation with our Advisors, where we discuss your hiring challenges.