My company is only small, we are a team of 5 and most of us have known each other for a while. So the whole recruiting process has never been much of an issue for us.
The last lad we took on we did advertise the role, we decided a graduate would be best, so he can be trained up to work how we want him to not how someone else trained him too. It was a bit of a pain finding someone but not that hard in the end, more time consuming.
However the idea of using an agency never crossed our minds, I am not that clued up how agencies work but I believe they take a % of the wage, so if I offered 15k the agency might take 15% of that (please correct me if I am wrong). Now this seems VERY expensive for a small company as the employee would walk away with £12,750 so not likely to accept the job offer and the agency would get £2250.
Obviously for a larger company, or someone needing staff for shorter period of time I can see the benefit, but for a small company why would I want to do this?
Then there is the fact that I get 2-3 calls a day from people who claim the specialise in SEO recruitment. Funny how they all seem to say that. When I was advertising for a job, I would get 5-10 calls a day. Even when you tell them you don’t use agencies and not to call back, they still call back 3 months later!
The fact that agencies are so aggressive is the main reason I don’t like them, I am sure there are many benefits of using a GOOD agency and the facts and figures I quoted above regarding their fees is probably completely inaccurate however I have never had the desire to find out more as I despise them that much!!!
Does anyone have any positive agency experience? Especially for the SEO industry?
I know Lyndon Antcliff has recently brought the matter up. The job he is advertising is 70k + comm + benefits so if my company was large enough to pay an SEM manager that kind of money and I knew I had a experience SEO recruiting for me I probably could justify the agency fees.
