What are Recruitment Agencies?

Recruitment Agencies are agencies that recruit candidates for employers. These are different from employment agencies where getting a job means that you have been employed by the employment agency. Recruitment agencies on the other hand make you an employee of an employer. The main difference between the two of them is that of the employer.

The main purpose of Recruitment Agencies

The whole process of recruiting people is time taking and it can become a real struggle for most companies or employers. Moreover, handling recruitment means handling a lot of applications before being able to finally find the right person for the job. This is where the recruitment agencies play their role for the companies or employers that do not have the time to go look for employees. All the employers have to do is take on the applicants for interviewing without having to worry about looking for them.

How Do Recruitment Agencies Work?

Agencies are given vacancy lists by the employers who hire them. From there on they use various methods like placing advertisements in various places. This may involve both public-based adverts as well as on internet job boards. They may also put forth their requirements to look out for the CVs that are submitted.

The agencies may not mention the names of the companies that are supposedly hiring you. This is because they don’t want you to apply for the position directly and may be worried that they won’t get paid by the employer. The recruitment agency gets its fee when the employer hires someone from the list of candidates that they have provided. For this person, they may even put a requirement for CVs in Microsoft Word format so they can forward an edited version if needed. This means that they may turn your CV into some branded template and remove any extra details that may allow the employer to directly reaching you so that they can get paid.

Otherwise, they won’t actually ‘change’ anything from your CV without permission.

How do they get Paid?

Recruitment agencies get paid for each candidate that is successfully hired by the employer. Some may also have fixed-fee and some may get paid according to the starting salary that you are hired upon. As an employee you are not responsible for paying them anything. They are hired by the employer and only the employer should be responsible for paying them. If any recruitment agency asks you for payments you should never do that considering it is possibly a scam.

Contracting through an Agency

Recruitment agencies may play a little different role when it comes to contract placements. The difference is that they may get a percentage of money that the employer pays for you and your services. This is carried out by the employer’s firm and they may pay the agency and you send invoices to the agency. This means that the bill isn’t directly paid by the firm. When you are approaching a contract through an agency it is important that you check out that agency’s rate so that you don’t get ripped off or put at a disadvantage. While it is not very common for someone to go contracting through an agency, it doesn’t mean that it does not happen. Whatever the choice may be, make sure to read every term and condition thoroughly so that you can at least benefit from the employment even on a contractual basis.

Conclusion

Recruitment agencies are getting more and more common day by day. It is no surprise that there may be good and bad agencies. It is recommended that before getting into any sort of contact with an agency, you should do your research. You can easily Google the required information and check out what people say about them. Doing your research is the only way to ensure that you are getting in contact with a good agency.