Hiring | Job Board Vs Recruitment Agency: Which Attracts Better Quality Candidates?

When it comes to recruitment, hiring managers are likely to desire two key things; the ability to attract high quality candidate applications in as little time possible.

If only it were that simple! Hiring employees is often a daunting experience for organisation’s choosing to solely use in-house resources, and can often rack up high amounts of time, effort and costs.

It has therefore become increasingly important to simultaneously leverage external tools designed to increase the efficiency of your recruitment strategy. Recruitment tools include the use of online job boards and recruitment agencies, but which is likely to provide better quality candidates to match up with job specifications?

Using Job Boards To Advertise Vacancies

Generalised job boards, such as Zoek, are particularly useful for organisation’s struggling to gain enough suitable job applications through their organic brand efforts, such as their websites careers page. Job boards widen prospective candidate reach on a national, and sometimes global level, expanding the number of active job seekers viewing job content and subsequently submitting applications.

What’s more, their purpose-built platforms are highly reliable at handling high volumes of candidate applications, making it easy for hiring managers to review and arrange appropriate feedback. Along with Artificial Intelligence (AI) integrations, finding quality candidates that match up with job descriptions is more achievable and cost-effective with job boards.

However, it’s important to recognise that job board performance does go hand in hand with how well job adverts are written by employers. If adequate care is not taken, you risk acquiring large numbers of inappropriate job applications which can waste time when sifting through them. Remember, quantity isn’t necessarily better than quality, so write your advert wisely.

Head-Hunting Talent With Recruitment Agencies

Recruitment agencies, on the other hand, usually provide industry specific knowledge and services, personally reaching out to a database of active job seekers by phone or email to discuss their suitability to move into new job roles. This can reduce an organisation’s HR administration since agencies will perform many of the recruitment tasks themselves, including external advertising and the pre-screening / pre-referencing process.

Whilst there is more of a targeted human touch with recruiters, many tend to develop bad reputations over time due to communication inefficiencies. Reality is, recruitment consultants are driven by commission incentives to get candidates accepted into a job role. Consequently, they can become quite pushy, putting job seekers under intense pressure to put their CV forward. Because of this, the actual quality of candidate applications may lower with recruiters who put their personal benefits as first priority, rather than the employers needs.

Moreover, communication can dwindle further if candidates end up getting rejected following interviews, often becoming ‘ghosted’ by recruiters. Put yourself in the shoes of a job seeker and think how frustrating and disheartening that experience can be, knowing fair well that they’re now less interested in working with you because their chances of being rewarded with commission has vanished.