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Low Cost Recruitment – The End of Recruitment Agencies?

The internet has brought many new innovations to industry and business services. One of the main effects has been the development of low cost and fixed fee services such as estate agency, legal services, insurance and travel.  All of these sectors have seen a massive increase in the number of low cost operators working exclusively via the internet.

A new phenomenon has arrived. Low cost (or fixed fee) recruitment involves a couple of different types of service. The first is the advertising service where recruiters pay for access to job boards via an intermediary and in the process save a fortune in job board costs and time spent advertising. The second is the access to the CV banks. A large number of job boards have CV banks of many thousands if not millions of CVs on. It is estimated that Monster, Totaljobs, Reed and Jobsite, the four main largest job boards, have between 10 and 12 million CVs to access on their sites.

 There are advantages and disadvantages of both types of service. A disadvantage with the advertising service is that you can never guarantee the calibre of applicants to your position. The disadvantage of the CV bank technique is that you may miss recent applicants onto the market who happen to see your advertisement and make an application but do not necessarily have their CV lodged on the various job boards.

The advantage of both techniques is obvious. The cost of using a recruitment consultant varies between £3,000 and £10,000 on average per placement whereas the average cost of low cost recruitment is about £400 to £600. 

The disadvantage of using low cost recruitment is that the client will spend a considerable amount of time in the recruitment process as the low cost recruiter will not get involved in the interview and negotiation stage. 

There are exceptions and one company in particular is www.businessbusstop.com.  This is a multi-service provider who also assists with IT support and supplies, web development and hosting, SEO and online marketing, outsourcing services and recruitment. For £499 they will advertise the vacancy across a number of job boards, access the various CV banks, shortlist a list of between 10 and 20 applicants where possible and send these through. If none of the first batch are suitable they will move on and repeat the performance again until the vacancy is filled. If they are unsuccessful the fee is refunded.

The site has access to all the main job boards as well as LinkedIn, Facebook, GoogleJobs and specialist website and recruiter databases, and it is expected that companies like this will soon start to capture a large proportion of the market.

 For further details of the Business Bus Stop service please visit www.businessbusstop.com.

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