Agency recruitment is dying

This was one of the many interesting topics that were discussed at Sterning’s first meetup last week. Needless to say, it led to some “healthy” debate amongst the group of internal & external recruiters. With the rise of Linkedin, larger Internal recruitment teams, technologies that are automating as much of a recruiter’s job as possible and general negative stigma around Recruiters – I did agree with the statement to an extent.

However, the popular sentiment in the room seemed to be that it’ll be the survival of the fittest and we need to adapt. If job boards are your primary resource in sourcing new candidates, you haven’t embraced Social Media, you’re hoping non-personalised bulk messages are going to gain the attention of candidates or clients – then yes, you’re going to struggle.

We also addressed the ‘elephant in the room’ of the often-complicated relationships between internal and external recruiters. Listening to Senior Recruiters from well-known tech companies discuss how they prefer agency recruiters to approach them was invaluable. To summarise, sometimes less is more. Use your common sense on when/how often to contact them, be direct and deliver in a timely manner.

All in all, it was an enjoyable evening and given it was our first meetup, it ran pretty smoothly. Hope our guests enjoyed the night and hope to see you for our next one!

Would love to hear your thoughts on how internal and external recruiters work best together and to improve the overall perception of recruiters.