When you’re planning on applying for a job and you’ve got the job posting before you, you might notice the company is hiring through an employment agency. This has been the trend for some time now, and it has many job seekers frustrated. After all, how you research a company and gleam information if the company itself isn’t identified?
Good point. As knowing a thing or two – actually all you can gather – about a company would only strengthen the applications they receive, why many ask, do companies not dispense with the 3rd party altogether? The answer lies in the benefits the company does realize which make what they lose acceptable.
You’ve got imagine your this organization who’s hiring. If you put an ad out there and announce you’re hiring, you’re bound to be noticed and approached; exactly the response you’d suppose an employer would want. However, there’s a huge downside; a throng of people suddenly dropping in, phoning and leaving messages; all asking questions and ‘just wanting a bit of your time.’ While this would normally be good, as a business you’ve got work that needs doing. All those calls and requests for your time are going to – should you decide to be courteous and give everyone their due – take you away from what you’d normally be doing; work.
Time, as the saying goes, is money. There’s a fine line between using your time to produce goods and services that generate income and time spent talking to the potential applicants who ask for your time. While providing your time may actually lead to finding and hiring the ideal candidate; one who put in the effort to conduct personal research on you and your organization, it becomes a different matter when you realize they can’t do this for every person that applies. The numbers have grown too large.
These days are really no different from days gone by for organizations in some respects. They still get resumes and cover letters from both over and underqualified applicants, those that aren’t qualified at all but who’s personal desperation is made clear, and of course those that are well qualified. The major difference is in the sheer numbers of applicants. This number has increased dramatically. With more and more people calling upon organizations – even with the best of intentions – it puts the organizations in the awkward position of being courteous which takes time away from work, or being discourteous which affects their reputations.
The answer many have turned to is the services of third parties. Some companies use Recruiters, Headhunters, temporary agencies and staffing supply organizations. Their instructions to these 3rd parties is pretty much the same message: find me the right people to choose from and don’t reveal our identity until we’ve made a decision to meet them. After all, if an applicant found out through any of the above, they might opt in their decision-making to forgo the services of the recruitment people and approach employer’s directly. Although well-intended, it would be suicidal to do so. The whole point of going through these screening people is to keep the masses from approaching the employer directly.
This presents a challenge for the applicant though. How can I as a job applicant tailor my application to the specific needs of an organization or even know if this is an organization I want to avoid or work for if I don’t know their identity? In short, that will come later when it’s eventually revealed to you.
So yes all the applications; yours included, get received and pre-screened by people who don’t actually work for the company in need. Recruiters and temp agencies have the advantage of having heard from companies themselves and getting to know their needs. They then do their best to receive the large number of applications and go through them to arrive at a desired number to pass on to the company doing the hiring. Now for the first time, representatives of the organization look at the small number of qualified applicants. All the over and underqualified, as well as the completely unqualified have been filtered out. All that is left is a relatively small number of potentially very qualified people to choose from to interview.
So if you’re an employer, would you pay to only get resumes from the best of the bunch? Sure you would. That’s cost-effective. The alternative is having your Receptionist approached by literally 75 – 100 people or more all vying for just a few minutes of someone’s time.
Now you might have a hard and fast preference for not applying for any job where you can’t first name the organization you are applying to. As much as I understand your position, if you continue to pass over jobs where you must go through a 3rd party, you have to understand you’ll be denying yourself a shot at working for some very reputable organizations; perhaps even your dream employer. In short, if they go through 3rd party’s to hire, it’s likely your only way in.
If you’ve identified a company you wish to apply to and you never see a hiring ad, it might be worth your time to find how they hire. If they do go through external organizations, find out which they typically use to do the pre-screening. Also, it’s a fair question to ask how successful any one 3rd party is in providing applicants that get hired.
Employment Counselling with Kelly Mitchell 