Why are there so many Recruiters and Temp Staffing Agencies

Hi guys,

Why are there so many recruiters and temp staffing agencies?

I hardly see IT jobs posted by the actual company.

Beyond all of this, I also see new recruiting companies popping up all the time.

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TechGromit

Most large organization use there own company web sites to advertise positions. Take Verizon for example, if you look at Monster.com, and do a search for Verizon, you get a total of 776 openings, if you do a job search on the Verizon website, there are over 2,300 current job postings. And the jobs on Verizon are "fresh" postings, unlike Monster where some of the jobs are weeks old.

What you need to do it identify what employers are in your area and search for the career portal for each company. save the career website links and check these sites for job leads. The career websites charge to post jobs, it cost $375 to post a job for 30 days on Monster.com, (but I'm sure there's a discount for bulk postings) obviously companies are only going to utilize this resource for difficult to fill positions.

This is where the recruiters come in, when companies can't fill positions, they turn to recruiters and staffing agencies for people. If a recruiter can locate someone for a company that's a direct hire, they get a cash reward, or if a staffing agency can provide someone, they get the contract. These agencies are far too small for attract a decent number of candidates utilizing there own job website, so they are forced to use Monster, and others job websites. This is one of the reasons the markup is so high for what they charge the customer and how much they pay a contractor, locating and hiring qualified people is expensive.

You also have to remember companies are only utilizing this method if they don't get enough applications on there company career website, if you strictly using the job boards, like monster.com for your job search, your missing out of a good 70% to 80% of the jobs in the market, because they never get posted to Monster. While not as convenient as checking a few websites every day when searching for jobs. Checking the top 50 to 100 company's job websites in your area daily in the key to landing that next job, especially when your unemployed. It's said your job when unemployed is finding your next job, and it's definitely a full time job in itself, if your truly serious in your job search.

NetworkNewb

Because there is almost 6 million job openings in the US and most companies will pay an agency when they find a qualified person to fill that position faster than they can. Lots of job openings = Lots of agency trying to scramble to find someone to fill them. Supply and Demand

brewboy

There's a gentleman in town who owns a small but established recruiting company. He has a very nice house on the water and lots of fancy cars.

TechGromit

NetworkNewb wrote: »

Lots of job openings = Lots of agency trying to scramble to find someone to fill them.

Often the same position is posted by several different recruiters. Companies do not care who gets them a qualified candidate, they are only paying the one recruiter that delivers, the others get nothing.

brewboy wrote: »

There's a gentleman in town who owns a small but established recruiting company. He has a very nice house on the water and lots of fancy cars.

If you can get job seekers come to you without advertising, it's a huge overhead cost savings. I have a relative that works for a small talent recruiting agency in North Jersey, specializing in engineering I believe, people go to them looking for work and employers do the same, it's just a matter of introducing one to the other and collecting a fee for the service. Being well known is the key for this dynamic to work.

revbox

What is fun is when multiple recruiters call you about THE SAME JOB.

I've already told the last six folks from India that called that I'm not interested in a 6 month contract for far less money that I am making now!

paul78

There's many reasons - one big one is that the barrier to entry is very low. Someone that's sales-oriented, driven, and has a penchant for brokering and facilitating connections can successful as a recruiter. But it's also a tough business and highly competitive. The recruiters that I do business with are usually ones that I've formed longer term relationships.

If you are seeing a lot of recruiters popping up - that's a good sign. It could simply correlate to the improving job market and employers are looking to fill positions.

AvgITGeek

My current employer advertised my position through a recruiter because he didn't have enough time to manage things and screen applicants. He did the interviews on the resumes received and screened by the recruiter. In short, if you don't have enough resources to physically go through one application after another? Use a recruiter. Can save time and energy in my employers case.

Slowhand

Before the big crash back in '08 it was a little bit different: there were more full-time jobs being posted and recruiting for temp positions was growing at a slow, steady pace. After the crash, a lot of companies were not only in financial straits, but also gun-shy about committing to hiring full-time employees that come with a lot of overhead and are an investment "forever", as opposed to hiring contractors that are paid out at a flat fee in easy-to-calculate 3, 6, or 12 month cycles. A lot of companies will have a different budget for temp workers, making their bottom line look better by appearing to have shrunk their workforce by not counting all those temps.

There have always been temp positions but they spiked after the economy went bye-bye. Some places use recruiters for FTE jobs, but in IT it's been a trend to hire contractors through temp agencies and either keep on renewing 'em forever or have them on for their initial contract and convert them to full-time afterwards. It's also become a great way for employers to "screen" their new hires, being able to simply not renew a contract is easier and cleaner than laying someone off if they're not a fit for the company. . . especially when the reason(s) for not wanting to keep the employee might be something that wouldn't be a fireable offense, like the manager simply not liking the person, (a.ka. the "cultural fit" situation.) Not always ethical, but it happens quite a bit.

AvgITGeek

To piggy back on Slowhand: Some states are "at will". Means, we can let you go whenever we want if you aren't satisfied. Don't know if more are moving to that model but Wisconsin is an At Will state.

paul78

AvgITGeek wrote: »

... Wisconsin is an At Will state...

As all things in the US - it's a bit more complicated than that

In general, most states support the notion of at-will doctrine using these 3 concepts - good explanation here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment - ps - I don't believe the list of states in the wikipedia article is up to date.