Here on the podcast, I’ve frequently referred to our ability at Scout Talent to help your organization with any recruitment support that it may need. It would be very understandable to assume based on these claims that Scout Talent is just another Recruitment Agency. That however, isn’t correct. At Scout Talent, we operate very differently from a standard Recruitment Agency and are really more of a Recruitment consultancy or business partner rather than an agency that exists just to fill open roles. 

How Recruitment Agencies do it

A recruitment agency operates on a model of filling available roles and, once the role has been filled, taking a percentage of a new hire’s salary as payment. Typically the cost is usually around 20% to 30% of the new hire’s salary and in most instances, you won’t pay until the person has actually been hired.

If you’re using a recruitment agency to hire a new Salesperson and you were planning on paying that Salesperson $50,000 you’d likely end up paying the agency between $15,000 to $20,000 per hire. That is quite the cost and it will only increase as you look to a recruitment agency for more senior roles. Most agencies justify this cost by referencing the fact that they guarantee a hire and that you’ll only pay after they’ve filled a role. This is a pretty compelling argument though in the case of some agencies it does come with some important clauses such as how if your new hire leaves within the first 6 months the agency will endeavour to replace them at no extra costs. The word endeavour is really quite beautiful for the amount of wiggle room it can create. 

What makes Scout different

What makes Scout Talent different? Quite a lot of things actually but while we’re on the subject of prices, our organization has a much more cost-effective price point of $6,000 to $9,000 depending on the role you are hoping to fill and where that role might be based. The cost is paid upfront, largely to cover the costs of advertising your new role, and it’s used to generate and shortlist a talent pool for you. You can hire as many people from that talent pool as you like and there are no further additional costs.  

On the surface, the difference between Scout Talent and a standard Recruitment Agency might seem to just be cost-based but it goes a lot deeper than that. A normal recruitment agency is supported by hardworking people who act as both salespeople and recruiters. Their role is to secure new business for their organization while also working to fill the available roles that they have open through both advertising and interviewing. It’s quite a large array of responsibilities for one individual to take on and requires a significant amount of juggling.

By contrast, at Scout Talent, we’ve split out responsibilities and have whole teams of individual experts dedicated to recruitment marketing, headhunting, employer branding, recruitment software, as well as interviewing and shortlisting. This team of specialists, of which I am part of, are dedicated to a specific aspect of recruitment which ensures they are experts within their field.

This means that, for instance, when I’m speaking to a client about the challenges they are facing in attracting candidates I have a wealth of experience to reach from on the matter as candidate attraction strategies are something that I in particular excel at. It also by default means that I’m not a salesperson and I’m not attempting to sell something. 

How we save you money

Another advantage of working with Scout Talent is that we also offer very cost-effective software solutions for recruitment and onboarding needs. Our ATS can be scaled up or down based on your recruitment volume to ensure that you have everything you need to manage your candidates in one centralized location. We also offer job board integration as well as add on tools for Talent Pooling and moving your Onboarding contracts into a digital format. All of these tools are backed by our in-house product specialists as is our Learning Management Software. 

It might seem like I’m bad-mouthing Recruitment Agencies but I’m truly not. If you need a service that is more transactional to fill a role with a body in a hurry then a Recruitment Agency is probably the way to go. If however, you are looking to outsource your recruitment permanently, you’d like to level up your recruitment technology, or you’d even just like to get some recruitment consultation then working with us here at Scout Talent probably makes a lot more sense for you.

If you’re interested in a free consultation with one of our many recruitment experts, please do get in touch and our we would be happy to help you to plan out all of your upcoming recruitment needs.

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