Recruitment Agencies in Pretoria

Should you use a recruitment agency to help you find your ideal job? Here is some advise to follow about the use of recruitment agencies (Pretoria Personnel Recruitment):

What Is A Recruitment Agency?

Recruitment agencies are outside firms who go and find candidates for employers.

Do not confuse recruitment agencies with employment agencies. The main difference lies in who ends up being your employer.

• If you get a job through a recruitment agency, you become an employee of the employer.
• If you get a job through an employment agency, you become an employee of the employment agency.

There are employment agencies out there who provide IT support people to firms, but professional engineering roles are normally found through recruitment agencies.

Why Do Employers Use Recruitment Agencies?

Recruiting people takes a huge amount of time, and for many firms it is a real struggle to find enough time to do it well. Recruitment is also very much a numbers game: an employer often has to look at a lot of applications before he finds the right person for the role. That might sound a bit horrible and impersonal, and it is, but it’s also how it is.

Recruitment agencies fill a specific need. Employers need the right people to apply for their jobs, but often they don’t have the time to go and find these people themselves. They use recruitment agencies to do this for them, so that the employer can spend more of their time interviewing applicants.

How Do They Work?

Agencies get lists of vacancies from employers, and then they place adverts on internet job boards, and sometimes in other places too. They are also always on the lookout for new CV’s being uploaded to the internet job boards.

If you’ve ever spent time looking through an internet job board at the current vacancies, you will probably have noticed that very few adverts mention the name of the company that is hiring. The reason for this is that the agencies are worried about not getting paid: if you saw a job that you liked, and you applied directly to the firm, then the recruitment agency wouldn’t get its fee.

Some agencies will take the CV that you give them and send the employer an edited version. (This, by the way, is the main reason why many internet job boards only accept CVs in Microsoft Word format). The agency may simply put your CV into their branded template, and some may remove your personal details to prevent the employer trying to approach you directly to avoid paying the agency.

No reputable agency will change the contents of your CV without your permission.

Are Agencies For You?

Should you use a recruitment agency at all?

The better recruiting agencies can be a great help in getting hired, especially later in your career when you’re chasing more senior jobs. They’re able to chase a tardy employer in a way that a direct applicant often can’t get away with, and if they’ve worked with an employer successfully in the past, they can have a good feel for what the employer is looking for.

If recruitment agencies weren’t useful and performing a necessary role, there wouldn’t be so many of them.

Picking A Recruitment Agency

As in all walks of life, there are good agencies and there are bad agencies, and it can be difficult even for industry veterans to tell them apart at first. You should also use Google to find out what other people have recently said about the agency. If you’re not happy with what you find, there are usually other agencies out there advertising the same role or similar ones.

The one exception to the rule is when an agency has an exclusive contract with an employer. In this situation, the employer has decided to use a single agency for all recruitment, and all applications have to be submitted via that agency. If this is the case, you should be able to confirm this from the employer’s website, or by telephoning the employer.

My advice is to deal with any agency on an advert-by-advert basis, keeping track of which firms you have applied to through which agency. Always ask the agency if they are a ‘preferred supplier’ for the employer you are applying to (and ask them via email to make sure you’ve got a record of their answer).

If the agency is a preferred supplier, that means that they have already agreed payment terms with the employer, and the employer will consider your application. You should also phone or email the employer directly to check that the agency is indeed a preferred supplier before you apply, just in case the agency is not being honest with you.

How Do They Get Paid?

Recruitment agencies get paid by the employer for every candidate they put forward who successfully gets a job with the employer. Some agencies get paid on a fixed-fee basis, and some agencies get paid a fee based on your starting salary.

You don’t have to pay them at all, and you should never use any recruitment agency who asks you for any payment.

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Source: Stuart Herbert

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