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Executive leadership often struggles with the choices when considering the most efficient and cost-effective recruiting solution. They must consider a variety of factors, from budgets, client management issues, current team's bandwidth and skillsets, to time constraints and factors within the employment marketplace. These decision makers have a variety of choices in front of them (contingency search, retained search, in-house recruiting, recruitment outsourcing and recruiting consultants), and because goals can vary there is no universally effective solution.
There are a number of reasons companies choose recruiting consultants. Here are a few that I have found to be deciding factors for clients:
The client may be at a crossroads with their business strategy, and an interim solution which can fill all points in the recruiting cycle may be prudent. Or perhaps the client needs an infrastructure and processes set up, but plans on a long-term solution using less experienced staff. A consultant can come in, create and implement the solution, help identify a fulltime resource, and train that new resource.
Clients may need to ramp up efforts quickly, but headcount approval is needed for a permanent solution. Likewise, a client may be at a stage in their business strategy where it would be best to test waters with a consultant before making the headcount investment.
Various factors might call for discretion, either internal, external or both.
The existing team doesn't have someone available with the right skillset to work on the project.
Leadership sometimes recognizes the value of bringing in someone outside their company or perhaps industry for either a different perspective, cross-channel expertise, or competitive intelligence.
Especially true for younger or smaller organizations, the current team simply may not have the skillset or experience for this project.
By bringing on a consultant, clients can sometimes take advantage of established relationships with search or technology vendors, candidate pools, or potential partner relationships that would be valuable to that client.
When quality becomes a key factor for decision makers, they realize that performance and quality can be much more managed by utilizing a consultant than any other solution.