Recruitment Agencies - Adapt or Die.

Pretty interesting article about how Recruiting Agencies are having to adapt to an ever changing marketplace. My thoughts from the inside of things - I agree with the article in some ways. It's definitely a little tougher out there. There are less agencies around as some of the small mom-n-pop ones are gone, but there is also more competition because agencies that have never targeted our market are now trying to get in this market.

Will agencies be around for a while? I firmly believe so, there is a value that we add that in-house or corporate recruiters can't do:

• Speed of finding the right candidates for a client. We have a pretty deep pool of candidates and many times can fill a position quite rapidly. A corporate recruiter is typically spread thin and can't necessarily focus that much or have a strong network


• Niche skill sets. Since we focus solely on IT related skill sets we have a strong network of those people. Again, corporate recruiters don't typicalyl have that deep a pool as they are busy filling everything.


• Confidential searches. Need to replace someone confidentially? I highly doubt an in-house recruiter will have that ability or skill to do that. This is something we excel at.


• Contract/Temporary staffing. Most corporate recruiters focus on direct-hires. We focus on contract staffing (and some direct-hire) and the advantages of utilizing an agency for these positions is excellent since there is no HR burden on the company.

Agencies will come and go. The 'net will not kill off agencies. We will have to adapt, change, and improve our process in order to compete effectively. Being small and privately owned it's something we are doing and will do successfully.

Social Media in Recruiting.

Pretty cool article on ERE about utilizing Social Media for recruiting. I've been utilizing SM (mainly Twitter) for the last few months to post jobs and other things from my viewpoint (IT Staffing and Recruiting). When we have a hard-to-fill skill-set or a need to fill something fast I've found that utilizing Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn have been invaluable to generate buzz and even find a few candidates.

Is this the future? Not really sure, it's a low-cost alternative to find people that's for sure. Some might call it a fad, but then again, we've seen a lot of things on the 'net that were fads and have become mainstream staples of our browsing history and usage.

I will say that (at least in our area) there are not a lot of agencies/recruiters utilizing a lot of SM to find people, post jobs, etc. This industry is interesting because a lot of people here are kinda old school in that they don't realize the power of using SM or something else to recruit.  When I came to FGP last year I was about the only one that started to heavily use LinkedIn for my personal network. Now a good number of us use it. I'm still about the only one using Twitter, but that's changing and I'm excited to see more people here using that platform.

Glad to hear that others are utilizing it as well. It's a great resource...if handled properly.

Check out the article on ERE.

My First Professional Blog Post...Kinda :)

My company - Find Great People - started a blog this year to help drive traffic, market our company, and become more tech savvy. They are having all sales/recruiters put up a weekly post and my turn was last week.

So check out my post on "What's Hot in IT Jobs" and let me know what you think!

Although my blogging here has pretty much died down, I still Twitter occassionally and update the family blog when I get a chance. Hopefully I can put out more tech/business related posts and articles as I get time.