Hiring top performing people is the key to every organization’s success. To hire the best people, companies must be willing to allocate time and money to this task. Companies have five alternatives for recruiting top performing people. Each alternative is outlined below:

Do-it-yourself
Companies may choose to conduct their own recruiting effort. While this alternative is typically the least expensive in terms of expense dollars, this alternative also demands the greatest amount of time from the hiring managers and usually generates the smallest pool of candidates to choose from. If the number one recruiting objective is to hire the best people for a job, this alternative may not be the best solution.

Recruiting Agencies
Using recruiting agencies is clearly the most expensive alternative. Average recruiting fees range from $15,000 per hire up to $30,000 or more for manager level positions. The advantage to using recruiting agencies is that you develop a large pool of candidates to choose from with minimal effort. Recruiting agencies spend each and every day scanning the internet and building lists of potential candidates. The most common complaint about recruiting firms is cost, inability to understand the technical requirements, and the quality of the candidates being presented.

Internal Recruiters
Companies that have large IT organizations and hire in excess of 25 IT people per year can cost justify hiring an internal IT recruiter. Average salaries of internal IT recruiters range from $60,000 to $100,000 per year (not including benefits). Additional costs include subscriptions to the internet and other advertising channels. The total cost can easily exceed $125,000 per year.

Contract Recruiters
Contract recruiters are paid by the hour to complete specific job searches. The average hourly rate for a contract recruiter is $50 to $75 per hour. If the average job search is open for 30 days, the cost can easily approach $10,000 or higher. Contract recruiters are not motivated to produce results quickly due to the compensation structure.

BRS – Contingent Search
The BRS solution leverages the value of having a recruiter working from an internal perspective while paying a fraction of the cost of a full time recruiter. Utilizing BRS will relieve hiring managers from the costly and time consuming tasks of advertising, screening resumes, and conducting initial interviews. Hiring managers need only interview and hire from a select group of pre-qualified candidates.