A Match Made In Heaven: Why Internal And External Recruitment Teams Need To Work Together

​Recruitment is one of the most important and high-impact activities an organisation can undertake. The payoff a great hire makes can be incredible, while the consequences of a bad one can be disastrous. And in an uncertain economic climate, making the right decision about exactly who should manage recruitment processes has never been more crucial.

A perfect partnership

While to the untrained eye internal and external recruiters may appear to work in duplicative positions, in reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Internal recruitment teams are like the elves to your Santa: they know an organisation inside out, and understand what makes a great hire. External recruiters, on the other hand, are like the fairy godmothers to your Cinderella: they’ll bring the magical connections and network that almost certainly won’t be available to your internal team.

Nevertheless, internal recruiters sometimes don’t realise the benefits of working closely with agencies, and some agencies don’t fully grasp how valuable (and crucial) it is to build and maintain relationships with internal talent teams. The prevailing perception that it should be either/or means many organisations are doing themselves a disservice, and missing out on the benefits that using a combination of the two can have for an organisation’s hiring strategy. In this article, we’ll be explaining why!

You can deliver an exceptional candidate experience

The experience a jobseeker has of your organisation will colour their opinion for life – and don’t think they won’t tell their family and friends, too. It’s easy for internal recruitment teams to become so swamped with applications and phone calls that communication falls by the wayside. However, responding to applications, providing detailed feedback, or even checking in post-interview all make a huge difference to your organisation’s reputation. These are all tasks that any good recruitment agency will perform as standard, ensuring your candidates don’t become irritated and disillusioned. Just like a relay race where each team member passes a baton to the next until the race is finished, internal and external recruitment teams can work together to ensure candidate experience is prioritised throughout.

You’ll get increased insights into the job market

Though in-house talent teams are an incredibly valuable resource that not many organisations are lucky enough to have, due to their size, they inevitably lack the resources of most agencies. This means that they may not have the tools at their disposal to make the most informed hiring decisions possible, which can make the process slower or more disjointed than it needs to be. In contrast, many agencies have access to a wealth of information regarding salaries, trends and candidate demographics at their fingertips. They may also have access to platforms that can be invaluable throughout the job search, and especially for niche or hard-to-fill roles, such as LinkedIn Talent Insights. While internal talent teams can give the lowdown on the required candidate and position in full technicolour, external teams can suss out the market in just a few clicks!

It’s easier to recruit for specialist roles

In contrast to internal recruiters who will likely have a little knowledge about a great deal of sectors, many external agencies consist of recruiters who have in-depth, specialist knowledge and contacts within a particular industry. Let’s say your organisation wants to hire a full-stack developer with a background in edtech. Sounds complicated and difficult? It is. However, when in-house recruiters team up with agency recruiters who spend all day long speaking with developers and know the market like the back of their hand, you’ll most likely cut your time to hire in half. What’s more, if internal recruiters work alongside agencies who specialise in several different sectors, they’ll simply be able to refer you to their colleague to assist with the next niche or hard-to-fill role.

Improved efficiency

As the old saying goes, two heads are better than one. By working together, internal and external recruitment teams can create a more efficient and streamlined hiring process, eliminating needless delays and improving candidate experience. For example, perhaps the external agency uses their tools and resources to create a longlist of candidates, speaks with each, and creates a shortlist to be passed to the internal recruiter for interviews to be arranged and feedback given. This means that 60% of the workload of the internal recruitment team is taken care of, leaving them to focus on what really matters: great communication and relationship building.

​Better screening and evaluation

Following on from our point above, so much of a recruiter’s time is taken up by sorting the proverbial wheat from the chaff when it comes to candidate selection. Headhunting for one role can amount to hours of searching online, cold calls and emails, and it can take even longer to sort the suitable applicants from the unsuitable ones following an online application process. External recruiters can save in-house teams some serious time by acting as the bouncers on the door, screening each candidate’s skills and competencies against the parameters of the role, to see if they’re suitable to proceed any further.

Reduced costs

I know what you’re thinking – if I’m using internal AND external teams, how can it possibly be cheaper? Well, we’ll explain. The CIPD estimates that the average cost of filling a vacancy, including labour costs, is £6,125. For a manager role, this rises to £19,000. Then there’s the cost of the empty chair, which can vary widely and is sometimes very significant. On top of all this, research suggests that 25% of all new hires don’t work out, with the top reasons being that the employee is a poor fit for the role (46%) or a poor fit for the culture (44%). In short, the cost of a bad hire is immense, and the probability of landing a bad hire increases exponentially the less thorough and more disjointed a hiring process is. When the hiring process runs as smoothly as possible, the better your chances of gaining a great hire!

To sum up, the benefits of internal and external recruitment teams working together are significant. You’ll enjoy access to a wider talent pool, enhanced screening and evaluation, better processes, increased insights into the job market, and much more. It’s a win-win-win situation: for recruiters, for the company, and for the candidates who get to work with an amazing team!

If you’re looking for an external recruitment agency who’ll always have your back, look no further. We speclaise in just about every industry and sector, from accounting and finance and IT, to human resources and marketing. Find a division and get in touch, or you can leave us a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.​​​​​​