Choosing Between Job Portals and Recruiting Agencies: What Are the Real Pros and Cons?

Why Choose a Recruiting Agency Over Job Portals?

Why should an organization spend on a recruiting agency rather than job portals? My company is planning to remove the third party for recruiting and emphasize excessive usage of portals. What are the pros and cons of the same?

Regards,
Ajit

I have been working on both formats for a long time now, and I hope my feedback will be beneficial for you.

Advantages of Job Portals:

• Easy to access.
• Good for mass recruiting.
• Large number of options for candidates.
• Economical.

Disadvantages of Job Portals:

• A specialized person is needed to do shortlisting from a large number of resumes.
• Many candidates apply just for the sake of applying; very few are genuinely interested.
• Even after lining up candidates for an interview, there is no assurance they will come for the interview, and proper follow-up has to be done.
• It is time-consuming.
• Strictly not a good option for filling senior/confidential positions.

Advantages of Recruitment Agencies:

• They have good contacts with candidates, so it is easy to contact suitable candidates.
• Good for senior position headhunting.
• Candidates generally turn up after being lined up for an interview.
• Only those candidates apply who are genuinely interested.
• Easy to do reference checks.
• Even if a candidate leaves after joining, we have a replacement.

Disadvantages of Recruiting Agencies:

• There are lots of agencies in the market, so pointing out good agencies is a big task.
• Generally, agencies specialize in a particular branch of recruitment.
• It is a bit costly.

Regards

Even recruitment agencies are also recruiting through job portals only. Then how can you make these two points?

Many candidates apply just for the sake of applying; very few are genuinely interested. It's strictly not a good option for filling senior or confidential positions. How will they attract senior profiles?

Thank you.

First of all, thanks for taking an interest in my reply. I wish to clarify that when I speak of recruiting agencies, I am specifying those agencies that have been in this business for a long time and work with true dedication. All those recruiting agencies that operate professionally have their own bank of resumes, and some of them even guide candidates from the day they join their first job.

Disadvantages of Recruiting Agencies

I have clearly mentioned the disadvantages of recruiting agencies as follows:
1. There are numerous agencies in the market, so identifying the good ones is a challenging task.

Is there any possibility for HR professionals to work without using job portals? If anyone has experience with this, please kindly share your knowledge and thoughts.

Thank you.
Regards.

There are some roles that job boards can't fill, and there are some that job boards can make cheaper! Recruiting is not a binary function. Sometimes you have to bite both the pills 

Regards,
Shankar

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