The core of any business is its people. So where do you start when it’s time to build?  Do you create your own internal recruitment team or do you go out and find a proven, experienced recruitment firm to do the heavy lifting for you?  Or perhaps it’s a little bit of both?

The pros of creating your own internal recruiting firm include potential cost savings as well as being able to have an internal team that literally lives and breathes the company’s culture. Yet as enticing as these benefits may be, there’s still a strong case to be made for utilizing an external recruitment firm. 

The following is a list of 8 reasons why to use an external recruitment firm over an in-house one:

• Hiring a single, external recruitment firm gives you access to a large team and a set of powerful tools to help your recruitment process. The firm will assign a full team to all of your recruitment needs, including an account manager, recruiters, sourcers, recruiting coordinators, and more. You will also receive the latest in search technology, including ATS, metrics, etc. as well as compensation sheets when going to offer, reference checking, intake call forms and an instant database of thousands of candidates to network with starting day one. Trying to match this same breadth of recruitment experience by hiring an internal team may be challenging and take up valuable time.   
• An external recruitment firm is usually a very turnkey experience.  One call can set in motion the full power, experience, connections and technology of that firm to benefit your company immediately. 
• To an external firm, recruiting is their core business. Outsourcing always makes sense if it’s not your core competency.
• PASSIVE CANDIDATES. Most in-house recruiters don’t have the bandwidth to go after passive candidates. Either they don’t have the time or it’s frowned upon to directly poach from competitors by reaching out and connecting with currently employed candidates. External firms, such as Tri-Search, pride themselves on sourcing, attracting and landing top passive candidates. It's critical to have a proven track record of recruiting passive candidates in this very candidate-driven market.
• A good recruiting firm can fill key positions in 60 to 90 days or faster. It could take a year or more to find and/or completely build an internal team to do all the work. 
• Although there’s a case that an internal HR team will truly know your business, a reputable external firm will incorporate learning your business as part of their tools and even be able to create unique branding initiatives. An external team will also have the tools to help brand your company as part of the job search with streamlined brand and job messaging across the job landscape as well as being able to offer marketing add-on’s such as candidate videos and company bios.
• INSIGHT & PARTERNSHIP. Sometimes the best insight comes from the outside. Hiring an outside firm helps give top executives inside the company a fresh look and 3^rd party perspective not only at their business, but their people and processes. A partnership should be formed that benefits both companies in terms of creating positive company culture and adding to the bottom line.
• Although it can seem to be more cost effective to build in-house, there’s really no way to compare the wealth of experience, tech and tools you receive with an external team. And an experienced firm will always present up-front pricing with long term guarantees ensuring you get top quality hires.

Sometimes, the recruiting process may require a combination of using both in-house and an external company… If you still are considering moving or building your recruiting team in- house, utilizing an external firm to help partner with you in the process is definitely a viable option. 

 A trusted partner can aid in the transition by:

• Providing a breakdown of the current state of the recruitment department
• Providing a breakdown (goal) of the future state of recruitment department
• Outlining process documents and standard operating procedures
• Developing and define all the tools, templates and processes
• Ensuring the proper dashboard, metrics and KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators)
• Aligning training with the new process

Choosing an external recruitment firm for your hiring needs is usually a win-win proposition. The overall takeaway is to make sure you align with the proper partner that provides the right level of professionalism, pricing and execution for the new plan.