What are the advantages and disadvantages of external recruitment?

External recruitment is a very popular method of recruiting staff in all organizations. This is one of the main ways HR teams can fill a vacancy or newly created position.

Opposed to internal recruitment, this method of recruitment is essential in many cases. However, it is important to note that its success requires the development of a good strategy.

Before addressing this last aspect, this page presents the advantages and limitations of external recruitment.

What is external recruitment?

External recruitment is a process of selecting employees. It differs from internal recruitment in relation to the target. Indeed, this type of recruitment targets candidates who are not yet part of the staff of the structure.

To achieve this, it relies on various sources among which it is possible to find:

• Employee recommendations;
• Publications in the media;
• Online job boards;
• Job fairs and forums.

This type of recruitment has both remarkable advantages and disadvantages that should be mentioned.

What are the advantages of external recruitment?

External recruitment undoubtedly has many advantages for companies. These range from the possibility of having candidates from all walks of life to the benefit of constituting a long-term investment.

The possibility of having candidates from all walks of life

A definite benefit in looking for candidates outside the company is the possibility of finding professionals with varied skills, experiences and qualities.

There are many candidates on the job market who want to develop their careers, but also to find a company that supports them in their development. Still others are only looking to participate in ambitious projects.

Recruiting externally is therefore the ideal option that can allow a company to appropriate these candidates.

In addition, it should be noted that when recruitment aims to enlist a candidate who already masters certain techniques or tools, opting for an external person avoids the structure to spend on training costs.

Strengthening the employer brand

By opting for external recruitment, a company seizes the opportunity to talk about its culture, its missions or to show its results.

Indeed, attracting candidates requires highlighting the structure. The recruiter is therefore called upon to communicate and interact regularly with the community. By carrying out all these actions, it strengthens its employer brand and enhances its activities to outsiders.

The recruitment of external candidates is therefore an opportunity for HR teams to show in its best light:

• The company’s vision;
• Its social policy;
• Its values;
• The attention it pays to the efforts of its employees.

It should be noted that a strengthened employer brand contributes favorably to the engagement rate of employees and their retention in the organization.

The opportunity to take a fresh look at the company

When a structure employs new talent, it has the opportunity to have its point of view on both its processes and its activities.

This is a valuable asset, especially when the opinions of employees who have been in the organization for some time may lack perspective or be objective.

In this way, recruiting talent from outside the company helps to give new impetus to the existing system and to develop new ideas. In short, external recruitment is a favorable factor for innovation in a company.

The advantage of being a long-term investment

Another advantage to carrying out external recruitment is that it brings to the company, young talented profiles on which it will be possible to count on in the long term if they are well treated.

Once these new talents integrate well into their new work environment, they will gain experience by immersing themselves in the culture of the structure.

What are the disadvantages of external recruitment?

The disadvantages of this type of recruitment mainly concern the time factor and the cost factor.

A time-consuming activity

The success of an external recruitment campaign depends mainly on the existence of a real strategy. The latter generally consists of:

• Defining your need very clearly;
• Communicating on his recruitment need;
• Convincing candidates to apply;
• Discovering and evaluate their profile;
• Making a promise of employment.

The task is even more difficult when HR teams are small.

In addition, the external search for specialized business profiles is likely to take even longer if the number of qualified candidates available on the market is not high.

A significant cost

While recruiting an external candidate is not an easy task, it is an effort that can also be very costly. It is indeed necessary for the company to plan a large recruitment budget to cover all the expenses aimed at attracting and then persuading a candidate to join its structure.

The major areas of expenditure during the realization of an external recruitment campaign are:

• The publication of advertisements on job sites;
• Recruitment marketing campaigns;
• Evaluation of candidates.

While it is indeed possible to outsource this activity by using, for example, the services of a specialized recruitment firm with a pool of qualified candidates for the requested professions, the initiative also has a significant cost.

This is also valid if the company opts for using a headhunter.

Longer adaptation time

The newly recruited external candidate has only limited knowledge of the structure and its actors. A certain period of onboarding or integration in a company will be necessary for them to fully integrate into the organization.

During this period, they must, among other things:

• Become familiar with the internal procedures of the structure;
• Get to know existing team members;
• Assimilate a certain amount of information;
• Take some ongoing projects “on the fly”.

To facilitate this post-recruitment stage, it is possible to implement various solutions such as:

• The delivery of a welcome booklet;
• Support for taking up a position;
• The presence of a mentor;
• Regular exchanges with the manager.

During this adaptation period, which can be relatively long depending on the amount of information to be assimilated, the new employee is not fully operational. They will therefore need time to get used to their brand new work environment.

When should external recruitment be considered?

The choice of an external recruitment strategy to fill a identified recruitment need is essential, especially when:

• The company’s activity shows a fairly high growth;
• The company wants to move in a different direction;
• The company does not have the specific skills it needs;
• The training of an employee is not currently possible;
• The company wants to have more employees engaged for the future;
• The company is not looking for temporary labour as in the case of work-study recruitment;
• The need to retain more employees in the long term is felt;
• The company plans to open a new entity in another geographic location.

It goes without saying that the use of this method of recruitment can be carried out in several cases. Knowing, moreover, the cost that this can entail, it is important to first analyze each situation with the managers of the services where a need for recruitment is felt.

However, whatever the needs and objectives of the company, external recruitment should only be considered when internal recruitment proves insufficient or is not possible for the positions to be filled.

How to optimize your external recruitment strategy?

To accelerate and ensure the success of your external recruitment strategy, there are a number of best practices that it is advisable to implement. The most important of these are presented in depth below.

Identify your needs

To carry out a recruitment campaign for external profiles, it is necessary to start with your needs. These must be clearly defined, then be used to develop a complete list of prerequisites sought in the future employee.

The prerequisites in question must accurately reflect the missions of the position, as is generally recommended in the context of a work-study recruitment campaign.

Develop a recruitment plan

Above all, you should know that external recruitment is not done on the basis of improvisation. It is essential to be strategic from the beginning to save time and money later. This then requires the establishment of a well-detailed recruitment plan.

It must be very precise and must be able to present each step to follow during the recruitment process. Its development makes it possible to anticipate all phases and to estimate the time and budget of the hiring campaign.

With a specific recruitment plan, the timely achievement of expected results is guaranteed.

Write a clear and precise job description

In order to optimize your external recruitment strategy, it is essential to pay great attention to the drafting of the job description. The latter must be developed in a clear and precise way, so as to make candidates want to apply immediately.

It should be added that a well-written job description must necessarily conform to reality. It is also important that it mentions the objective of the position to be filled, the issues and the missions that will be assigned to the future recruit.

In addition, it is recommended to play the card of honesty by also indicating the specific constraints related to the position, without forgetting to communicate on practical details such as:

• The desired start date;
• The remuneration offered;
• Working hours, etc.

Writing your job description well is fundamental to better arouse the interest of readers and save time in your recruitment campaign.

Develop your employer brand

In order to optimize your external recruitment strategy, it is essential to think about developing your employer brand. Even if it requires a lot of effort and a significant investment, the resulting benefits are numerous and lasting.

Developing your employer brand consists of implementing a number of actions to enhance the value of a company’s image among future candidates. Several actions can help achieve this, including:

• The creation of a career site to share job advertisements as well as the company’s culture;
• The implementation of a recruitment strategy on social networks to increase its visibility with future talent;
• The production of interesting content in order to present itself as an employer of choice and easily attract the attention of candidates.

To develop your employer brand, it is also important to communicate your values and ambitions. This will create a sense of belonging in candidates who also share them. Thus, they will apply more naturally.

An effective way to take care of your employer brand is to give great importance to employee reviews. Indeed, today, more than 80% of candidates consult the comments left by the employees of a company before applying for its job offer.

Digitize the recruitment process

The digitalization of recruitment is a practice that has been on the rise in recent years. As one of the main challenges of recruitment, it is now proving to be an excellent solution for optimizing an external hiring strategy.

Digitizing your recruitment process is simply using specialized software to eliminate certain time-consuming and repetitive tasks that are inseparable from any recruitment. This saves time in a hiring campaign.

The use of recruitment software simplifies the daily work of HR teams by automating many actions such as:

• Ad delivery;
• Reminders of communications with candidates;
• Screening candidates, etc.

This allows HR teams to focus on high value-added tasks, primarily building and maintaining personalized relationships with each candidate.

It should be remembered here that digitalization is a solution not to be overshadowed when the objective sought is the optimization of its external recruitment strategy.

Do you want to make your external recruitment more efficient?

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