In the realm of IT recruitment, entrepreneurs often find themselves grappling with issues of how to pay cheaper and get the acceptable quality of services, yet, for some reason, they choose to cut expenses on a crucial aspect where it’s not advisable to do so – the recruitment services.
The market is flooded with recruiters willing to fill positions for a commission equal to or less than a single salary. This trend has steadily grown over the past 5–7 years, driven by multiple factors. The illusion of receiving nearly identical services for less cost tends to lure businesses into this seemingly lucrative hiring arrangement. However, the real catch unveils itself in the long run. Sometimes, the approach of closing vacancies at any cost and by any means works, but it harbors repercussions.
Why do some recruiters come cheap?
- The answer lies in the realm of low-skilled labor – recruiters who receive just a fraction of the earnings or a minimum wage, with almost no proper training or understanding of the IT sector. Companies incur minimal expenses on such personnel who work for bare minimum, thus, maintaining a low cost of operation.
- The lack of investment in process automation and performance tracking results in low recruitment efficiency. Perceived by company managers, recruiting 5–10 individuals remotely on a trial basis to fill a vacancy seems more economical than spending $50-$300 on specialized software that can, for example, track spam messaging to the same candidates from different recruiters.
- Recruiters work on 100–500 vacancies simultaneously, and their resources are spread thin across several clients at the same time. In reality, many IT Recruitment Entrepreneurs find it easier to take on five clients who are ready to pay cheaply at one salary per candidate and assign the vacancies to a single recruiter, rather than negotiate a reasonable payment rate with one client and deliver quality work with the team of recruiters necessary for successful placement.
- Agency heads dread the possibility of having fewer clients tomorrow, unable to cover potential cash flow gaps, hence they opt to work with even the cheaper, albeit paying clients today than face a cash deficit or lay off underutilized staff. This tactic leads to price undercutting in the market.
- Agency leaders or sales managers doubt the feasibility of selling services at 16-25% and fear losing clients due to fierce competition and the presence of cheaper alternatives.
You might encounter those willing to settle for a low fee, and if luck is on your side, you might even receive the coveted resume. However, the chances are high that your cost-saving measures or budget constraints on recruitment might land you an unwelcome “gift” – a tarnished goodwill.
The IT community is closely knit, and information, especially negative, travels at lightning speed. Recruiters and company representatives, who are usually the first point of contact with candidates, often become the topic of discussion in various forums and chat groups where IT professionals exchange information.
In scenarios of “rapid” recruitment and engagement with low-skilled recruiters or IT Recruitment Entrepreneurs lacking a ‘quality’ criterion in training and tracking the performance of recruiters, the aftermath is usually grim. The initial contact often comes with overly generalized company information, mistakes in the tech stack, or lack of details about the working conditions, not to mention the unprofessional messages and spam emails with errors in names and sometimes rude communication.
The lesser known a company is before this contact and the lesser it spends on employer branding, the more resources and efforts are required in personnel selection. Absence of investment in the former and budget minimization in the latter leads to a recruitment process that’s neither effective nor swift as anticipated.
Often, companies are willing to sacrifice time in attempts to find the perfect candidates with inexpensive contractors, ready to face reputational risks which eventually translate to additional budget for explaining to the market who they really are and where the communication breakdown occurred.
Well, this is also a business and personnel selection approach, and for such clients, we gladly offer employer branding services. Quite often, after hearing complaints about previous agencies and recruitment inefficiency over several years, companies need not the next contractor, but a service to communicate to the market the values and conditions the team and management convey, addressing the negativity formed among certain communities. This is especially noticeable for narrow-profile tech communities, for example, Magento, Ruby, Python devs, etc.
Conclusion
The lack of company recognition in the IT talent market coupled with budget constraints in recruitment could extend the time required to hire qualified professionals both initially and in the long run. The grave mistakes of low-skilled recruiters demand extra budget to rectify the errors, mend the damaged reputation, and rebuild employer branding from scratch.