Placement Agency Essay

The need for talent forever exists in corporations. The search for the right

kind of talent is probably every organization’s biggest challenge. There

enter the intermediaries like a placement agency who bridge the gap

between the organizations and potential employees.

Traditionally, what does a placement agency do?

A placement agency is an organization which matches the employers to

the employees. The recruitment process comprises of sourcing,

interviewing, reference checking and matching candidates with clients,

usually companies or larger corporations, both in terms of the work

culture of an organization and the specific requirements of the position,

and finally selecting a suitable candidate for a vacant job position.

The agency

The agency remains the point of contact between

both the parties.

If an agency is successful in what it is supposed to do, every party benefits

 The client gets the right candidate for a vacant position

 The candidate is placed in an appropriate and satisfying

position

 The agency receives an appropriate fee for their work

Do companies use placement agencies?

The answer is yes and no. Most organizations do use placement agencies.

More often than not organizations outsource their core HR function. They

outsource their recruitment function mainly because it’s cost effective.

According to a report by Growth Praxis, organizations can save up to 40%

of their recruitment costs by outsourcing their recruitment process. They

give this function to HR experts who find the crème de la crème in the

talent acquisition process. In such corporations, these placement agencies

or now as they are called, HR consultants, play a major role.

The role that the HR consultants play in today’s day and age goes beyond

than just finding the right kind of talent. They also offer various other HR

services like structuring the payroll services, learning and developing

policies and sometimes even the compensation and benefits policies.

When we are still on the topic of replacement of the traditional placement

agencies, let us take a different perspective. A student who is pursuing her

business degree might not want to enroll herself in a placement agency.

Colleges and Universities have placement cells that directly get in touch

with companies. As of lately, even these placement cells are getting

replaced by the online job/internship portals like internshala.com,

letsintern.com, LinkedIn and so on. Students are able to get a direct point

of contact with the company rather than relying on third party sources. An

added advantage to this form of recruitment from a candidate or student

perspective is that, it is free of cost. Finding an internship on Internshala

takes a student hardly any resources. Similarly, finding a job on LinkedIn

takes very less time too.

Now, one might argue that the Placement agencies not just provide jobs

but also help train candidates in certain skills. And, obviously as stated

earlier, this comes with some cost factor involved. The counter argument

to that is even our online portals provide certifications to aspirants, most

of them bring free of cost.

Over the past decade, technology has drastically transformed