Why Your Small Business Might Need a Recruiter

If you're like most small business owners, your typical reaction when one of your key employees quits is "Oh, #*%$!” Hiring a qualified replacement can be hard, and doing it quickly often seems impossible. Or what if you have a new position to fill? Do you relish the chance to recruit the perfect candidate, or do you regret having to dip back into the employment pool?

Many business owners view hiring as a chore rather than an opportunity.

In the heat of making sales and processing orders, you just want to get a warm body in that open position rather than expend the effort to find the right candidate.

But good employees are key to a business’s success. The problem is that most small-business owners don’t have the time to do it right. Advertising, culling through resumes, and interviewing candidates can be a full-time job. That’s why many companies look to third-party recruiters to help them hire better.

You might think that hiring a recruiter is too expensive. It can be, but so can all the time and money you’ve spent in the last year on identifying, recruiting, and hiring people. Try to quantify your recruiting efforts in dollars and cents. Include the impact that the diversion had on your business. Then compare that to the typical fee of a recruiter, which is anywhere from 20 percent to 35 percent of a candidate’s salary. You may be surprised at how close the costs are.

In fact, one of the benefits of hiring a recruiter is that you’ll have a controlled, fixed cost: You’ll know what it’s going to cost you to fill that position. Plus, the right recruiter can do the job better and faster than you can.