“Recruiting agencies are helpful but somewhat expensive.”

I often hear this from tech companies which have turned to recruiting agencies to search for appropriate candidates. The cost of a candidate hiring, (even if they were born coding and are going to stay in the company for 10 years), always seems too high for them. However, employers often don’t realize that they are paying for much more than just a good developer, designer, or manager. There are many hidden perks which you can obtain from your agency, and you need to find out about them to fully benefit.

Here are these non-obvious benefits.

1. Effective job description

Take a look at this description:

We are an industry-leading e-commerce company looking for a PHP developer to join our team to help us improve our website. We’ve got a spacious and light office, friendly team, competitive salary, and free cookies.

And now this:

An online e-commerce platform, selling aerial survey equipment, is looking for a PHP developer. You will face a lot of architectural challenges like breaking the current monolith app into microservices, using the latest tech stack: Symfony4, Composer, Docker, Behat. Be also ready to switch to Go for some tasks.

The difference is obvious, right? An agency recruiter sees dozens of job ads every day, and they know how to make it attractive for techies.

Benefit: When you’re working with an agency, you’ll always have somebody available to help with your job description and making corrections.

2. Post-interview feedback

Candidates hardly ever tell companies why they’ve rejected job offers. It might be an impolite Hiring Manager, a boring test task, or even the overall atmosphere in the office. However, agencies have to find out those reasons — otherwise, they won’t get you a candidate and won’t get paid. So, you can always ask your agency about the candidates’ impressions of the interviews and make the necessary improvements.

Benefit: An agency can help you to refine your interviewing process so that you won’t discourage the best candidates.

3. Employer branding reinforcement

Employer branding is not a beautiful video on your website, where your happy employees say good things about your company. It’s what your colleagues, partners, and competitors say about your company behind your back. A good agency will always help you figure that out.

Ask your agency what candidates think about your sphere of activity, your website, their future tasks, etc. Don’t be shy about even discussing rumors in your specific market. When you know your flaws, you can both fix them and counter some of the candidates’ objections. This will make your interviews go more smoothly while also improving your employer branding.

Benefit: An agency helps you discover the candidates’ opinions about your company, allowing you to constantly improve them.

4. Finding your selling points

To attract the best specs, you need to perfectly understand your strengths. An agency recruiter can tell you what candidates think about your product, team, tech stack and terms. Having this feedback, you will be able to better highlight your ‘selling points’ to attract suitable people. Also, in the process, you can minimize your perceived negatives as well.

Benefit: An agency helps you to highlight your ‘selling points’ and attract the best talent.

5. Networking

As a rule, agencies know everybody — from relocation providers to lawyers. So if you need some specific services, turn to your recruiting agency first. They speak to a lot of people every day and know the career market inside and out. Hence you can ask for help with relocating your candidates, coping with paperwork, resolving legal issues, managing finances, etc.

Benefit: An agency helps you to find a reliable lawyer or financier, rent a new office, or introduce you to investors.

If you’re now working with an agency, ask them about the above-mentioned perks, which will improve your hiring process, and may even boost your business through networking.

Agencies know more than you think; you just need to find a reliable one. Good luck!