Recruitment agencies VS In-house recruiting VS Freelance recruiters

Are you going to expand your business? Do you need to make your team work more productive? Do you consider it necessary to introduce new personnel into your team with fresh ideas and a new look at business processes?

Then you are faced with a challenging task: determining which way to achieve your goals.

Thus, your primary step can be formulated as follows: who to contact for recruiting services, a professional recruitment agency, a freelance recruiter, or your In-house recruiting team?

Let us look at the advantages and drawbacks of all three options and help you make the right decision.

Costs

Costs include several significant components, such as salaries or payment expenses, provision of software equipment, workplace, costly materials, etc.

When compared, it becomes obvious that the In-house team will be the costliest in this aspect. You will have to provide your permanent employees with regular salaries and supply them with workplace and office equipment, ensure their insurance guarantees and regular vacations, and pay mandatory taxes for them. And remember to consider that it goes about several people, not one or two.

It is definitely more profitable to address a professional recruitment agency. This way, you will save significantly on the costs of regular employees associated with all the above points. In addition, you will receive qualified recruitment services with a one-time payment upon getting a positive result.

Finally, the most economical way to hire new employees is to contact a freelance recruiter. The freelance rate is, on average, much less than the amount you will have to pay for the services of a recruitment agency. Note that we are not discussing the quality of work here.

So, at this stage, the freelancer is in the lead.

The rate of closing vacancies or the hiring speed

The rate at which vacancies are closed directly depends on the size of the candidate database and the variety of resources, tools, and sources recruiters use.

In this position, without a doubt, the recruitment agency is in the lead, which is engaged in the search and selection of candidates on the largest scale and has much more extensive opportunities for this compared to the In-house team, which can mainly rely on the company’s internal resources and a modest candidate base. In addition, the recruiting agency can utilize a much larger number of experienced sourcers and recruiters to search for the required candidate and fill vacancies within the shortest possible time.

As for the freelance recruiter, in this case, they look the least promising, with the most modest candidate base, tools, and resources that require specific financial expenses and human efforts to maintain them at the proper level, which a single freelancer cannot afford.

The quality of candidates and the possibility of hiring rare specialists

Again, as stated above, the leader is the one with the most extensive candidate base, the most potent human and recruiting resources, and special tools. It is the recruiting agency. Besides, it is well backed with the substantial experience of its sourcers and recruiters.

The In-house team loses to the agency at all the above points. The recruitment agency has more experienced and skilled staff that can quickly hire even the rarest specialists. 

And as for the freelancer, it makes no sense to compete.

Thus, two more points are in favor of the agency.

The experience and trend matching

Whoever has the largest scale of work in their field is the most experienced.

Without a doubt, a professional recruitment agency performs the largest amount of work to provide various recruitment services. It performs recruiting on a more regular basis than the In-house team and at a much higher volume than an independent freelance recruiter.

Besides, the recruiting agency’s success depends on its ability to keep abreast of and actively apply the best and latest practices and trends in recruiting. With solid experience, the recruiting agency knows which direction to look and what to learn much better than the less experienced In-house team and freelance recruiter.

The employer brand

Here we must unanimously give the In-house recruiters the first place because no one can understand as well and in detail as the own employees the various subtleties that make up the employer brand and maintain and strengthen the company’s reputation and culture.

The second place rightly belongs to the recruitment agency because maintaining the client’s brand plays a significant role for a self-respecting agency.

And the freelancer completes the list because, for them, the result of their work is of paramount importance, and such nuances as the brand or culture of the client are not of great significance for them.

The database, software, and methodology

Of the three competitors, the recruitment agency is the one that provides the most permanent and most extensive recruitment services.

Therefore, it is only natural that a successful recruiting agency typically invests a substantial portion of its profits into growing its database, updating its software to the highest standards, and continually seeking even more productive recruiting methods.

The In-house recruiting team cannot afford to manage the company’s budget funds in the same volumes. The company probably has other, more essential calculations for these funds.

Finally, the freelancer does not have even a third of these opportunities.

So, the agency is in the lead.

The size of the recruiting team

The ability to allocate several experienced sourcers and recruiters to search for a rare candidate or fill a large set of vacancies at once and the opportunity not to limit the number of human resources needed to be involved in the current project is a vital factor when choosing a favorite.

In this case, the freelancer already loses at the start: they obviously have no one to involve in the project except themselves.

The In-house team is usually limited to a few permanent employees of the company, and it will be unprofitable for the company to increase the staff of the team since the company’s main activity is not in the field of recruitment.

So, it is evident that the leader is, again, the recruitment agency that can afford to allocate as many workers to the project as necessary to achieve the best result.

The variety, quantity, and quality of interviews

The freelancer can conduct as many interviews as necessary. But quantity does not mean quality. The freelancer rarely possesses all the required qualifications, skills, and experience to lead, for example, highly complicated technical interviews at a proper level.

The In-house recruiting team usually deals with a particular field of specialization and cannot conduct all types of technical or specified interviews properly, either.

As for the recruiting agency, it has enough staff workers to conduct high-quality interviews of any complexity and as many of them as needed.

Therefore, the point goes to the agency.

The coordination and cooperation

The freelancer, in many cases, may be unavailable simply due to poor connection quality or some other technical reasons. And there is no one to insure them.

The recruiting agency can coordinate all aspects of the project, such as creating job ads and descriptions, conducting interviews, etc. It can also establish excellent communication with the client’s representatives.

But the agency cannot surpass the In-house team, which can coordinate the project stages and communicate directly within the company.

Thus, this time the point is in favor of the In-house team.

The workflow and the control of the project

The freelancer is again in the worst position since they work alone and cannot simultaneously control so many processes. Therefore, they usually focus on the main thing: the search and selection of candidates.

The agency has a sufficient number of people and capabilities to carry out the workflow in a quality manner and adequately control the stages of the recruitment process.

But in this case, it loses to the In-house team, who can not only directly participate in the workflow inside the company but also directly control the entire process from within.

One more point is in favor of the In-house recruiting team.

The deadlines and other guarantees

Obviously, the freelancer is the most difficult to meet deadlines, as they alone have to do an enormous amount of work. And they cannot guarantee that, if necessary, they will be able to provide a replacement for the selected candidate as soon as possible for the same reasons.

The In-house team, even though it consists of several people, also cannot always meet deadlines and supply reliable guarantees of replacing the candidate due to insufficiently extensive technical capabilities and a relatively limited candidate base.

Here again, the recruitment agency comes forward, which not only has the necessary set of professional means and human resources to meet deadlines but also, as a rule, provides its clients with guarantees to replace the candidate within the shortest possible time if necessary.

The risks

Naturally, the company is exposed to the greatest risk if it cooperates with a freelancer. There are no guarantees that they will not suddenly stop communicating or refuse to further search for the candidate.

Theoretically, difficulties may also arise when working with a recruiting agency, although, in this case, the risk is rather small.

But the most reliable is the In-house team, which, being part of the company itself, will certainly not disappear and lead the search for the candidate to the logical end.

Therefore, the final point is in favor of the In-house team.

In conclusion 

If you do not take the trouble to count the points in favor of each option to hire new employees, you will find that the recruiting agency has the most points. Professionalism, experience, technical capabilities, human resources, and reputation are on their side. There is no doubt that if you want to hire the best candidates, your decision is the recruitment agency.

So, save your time. Time is money, as they say.

The comparison results

The comparative analysis in the form of tables and graphs are presented in our full article on our blog:

• Outsource VS In-house recruiting or Recruitment agencies VS Companies' recruitment departments
• Recruitment agencies VS Freelance recruiters
• Full comparison: Recruitment agencies VS In-house recruiting VS Freelance recruiters
• Comparison by companies' types: Startups VS Small scale-up VS Medium VS Enterprises

OnHires — global recruitment agency

So, partnership with  the recruitment agencies is the best decision, which helps companies to hire necessary talents, build perfect recruiting processes, and achieve all hiring and business goals.

We can hire a candidate that will perfectly match all your requirements: from a junior to a lead developer, from a non-technical talent to a C-level specialist. The base of candidates we operate with includes 130,000+ applicants.

We quickly hire IT specialists and fill any vacancies, even the rarest one, for Web3, Crypto, Blockchain, Cybersecurity, DeFi, FinTech, IoT, Software, AI and other companies.

Our recruiting services are:

• pay-per-hire or pay-for result;
• subscription-based recruitment;
• recruitment process outsourcing.

Contact us in case If you need help to close vacancies or have questions about recruitment: [email protected].