Two Categories of Recruiting Agencies
If you’re among the many unemployed or soon to be unemployed then one thing that you should be aware of as it pertains to recruiting agencies is that they basically can be divided into two categories. Those categories are as follows.
Two Types of Firms for Two Types of Positions
The first group would be the recruiting agencies that specialize in seeking out employees for seasonal jobs, temp staff and mid-level managers. The second grouping of recruitment agencies would be those that function to locate people who are qualified for more senior level positions. Quite often in upper level management.
Two Separate Fee Scales for Two Different Agency Types
Aside from their most obvious above mentioned differences, they also differ in a few other areas as well. For instance, the two categories of recruitment Temps agency also will in all cases charge different prices for their services. For obvious reasons the first group mentioned will charge less than the second type of recruiting agency.
The Employers Pays – Never the Employee
Even so, it’s important to know that it’s the employer who pays a recruitment agency and never the job applicants. The employer who has hired the recruitment agency simply pays them an agreed upon sum, once they hire a prospect that the agency has directed to them. The amount of the fee the employer pays can vary widely, depending on the difficulty of finding qualified workers in a certain field and the amount that the worker will be paid for his or her work per annum.
The Retained Search Firm
Now the method of payment for what is referred to as a “retained search firm” is quite different. A retained search firm is hired by a company for a set period of time and usually functions as more of a consulting service. Also because they are hired and paid as a consulting service, a retained search firm will be paid whether or not their services result in an employee being hired.
Why a Retained Search Firm?
So then why would a company procure the services of a retained search firm, rather than a recruitment agency? There are several reasons for this and one of them is that a retained search firm generally specializes in hard to locate employees for more specialized positions. Employees that take more time and money to find and then hire. These would be the positions that companies look to for help in filling that pay $100,000 per annum and up.
