In-house Recruiters, HR Generalists, Staffing Firms, Recruiting Agencies, and Talent Acquisition Partners. What makes sense for your startup?
Do I need an in-house recruiter, an HR specialist, an agency recruiter, a staffing firm, or a talent acquisition partner for my startup?
There are a lot of similarities between them but what makes the most sense for your startup?
In-house recruiter: In-house recruiters are an internal and permanent component of the startup. This can be a great option if you see your startup hiring frequently throughout a longer period. In-house recruiters typically have a deeper understanding of your organization’s nuances and the players within it because they have worked with your startup on a full-time basis.
A potential drawback is that there usually needs to be a justifiable amount of requisitions consistently coming into the business to justify having someone in-house whose sole purpose is recruitment and talent acquisition. In addition to this, some recruiters might completely specialize in only several kinds of capabilities.
For example: Your in-house recruiter could be very strong in technology-related roles, but is unable to identify designers and review portfolios effectively.
HR Specialist or Generalist: HR Specialists often are another in-house component of a company similar to a recruiter. The main difference between them and a recruiter is that HR Generalists tend to have various functions within the organization. This includes hiring, recruitment, policy, training and development, employee engagement, termination, benefits, and compensation.
A potential drawback can be that the HR Specialist isn’t able to fully dedicate to just one HR function within the organization and can be spread across various responsibilities. In addition to this, they might not have particular specializations when it comes to certain talents they can recruit.
Staffing Firm (sometimes called Temp Agencies): Staffing firms primarily focus on temporary or short-term contract positions. They can be a great way to temporarily augment your workforce.
Recruitment Agency: Recruitment Agencies can be similar to Staffing Firms, but the emphasis usually is on permanent placements. Depending on the recruitment agency they might have a hybrid of permanent and temporary placements.
Recruitment Agencies and Staffing firms typically have specializations within their departments. For example: some staffing firms and agencies only focus on industries such as logistics, supply chain, finance, insurance, technology, design, marketing, etc.
When deciding on what 3rd party recruiting vendor to use, be sure they can fix your need.
Recruitment firms oftentimes are compensated via a contingent fee, while temporary staffing firms usually use billable hours that reduce the conversion fee overtime the more the temporary employee is utilized by the client.
A potential drawback for larger agencies typically don’t have a whole lot of wiggle room to negotiate the fees simply because of their overhead costs and their approval processes, but this can also potentially differ from agency to agency.
Another drawback is that not all agencies and firms are the same, so it can be left up to chance if you are being given quality candidates based on your startup needs. Unfortunately, the recruitment business can breed agencies that focus on quantity vs quality.
Talent Acquisition Partner: A Talent Acquisition Partner primarily focuses on helping businesses and companies find, and attract talent. A Talent Acquisition Partner like Hippogriff focuses on building the ideal candidate profile that is in most alignment with the company’s needs and focuses on creating a partnership to help the startup be set up for success.
A potential drawback is that some Talent Acquisition Partners might have certain specializations and prefer to concentrate on certain verticals.
