Find out how a smaller, boutique staffing agency can adapt to your needs and get you the best candidate possible.
Making the choice to work with a staffing agency is an easy one, but choosing a firm to retain can be difficult. Each agency will have its own expertise and its up to you to choose the firm that reflects your requirements and needs. Many times that choice is a smaller, boutique staffing partner that can adapt to your needs and get you the best candidate possible.
Small Staffing Firm Advantages
The benefits of working with a small firm are plentiful, and will make the difference between getting a candidate or the right candidate for the job. At a small firm, every client contract will impact their bottom line and their reputation. They are dedicated to every client and simply cannot afford to spread themselves too thin. By working with a select few clients, a smaller firm has access to a much larger talent pool than a multinational firm who cannot prospect candidates from its’ large client base.
Smaller firms are often owner operated and ensure their recruiters are highly trained and equally committed to the success of their clients. Dedicated recruiters understand how to identify the right prospects, contact them discretely, and clearly communicate the value of each company they represent and the position they are selling. This usually results in faster placements with more qualified talent.
This is the exact opposite of large staffing firms who typically have a higher turnover rate and are frequently replacing recruiters within the organization. They also have a heavy client load, which makes it difficult to dedicate the time and effort it takes to research and speak with clients to understand their needs or to research and interview the right potential candidates. Many larger firms are continually scrambling to grow their client list and fill as many job openings as possible. With a heavy client load, this means that not as much individual attention can be paid to each position, and finding qualified and available candidates can take a while.
A common tactic of many of the smaller firms is to assign a team to every position to identify candidates. Working as a team allows them to search from a larger pool of prospective candidates by conducting a more comprehensive search. Recruiting is more of an art than a science and like artists, every recruiter has their own style in terms of their recruiting process. Once you go beyond the basic recruiting skills, it’s the experience and style of the recruiter that enables them to find, contact and persuasively “recruit” top talent.
Before you give your next position to a large recruiting firm, speak with a smaller firm in your industry and realize the small staffing firm advantages mentioned above. Smaller agencies understand that even the best recruiters can’t cover all the bases quickly when it comes to discovering the best candidates.
