What is Flat Fee Recruitment?
Flat fee recruitment, like our service at Crunchposter, is a combination of the best parts of traditional recruitment agencies and job board advertising. You get an Account Manager who will handle your campaign and the wide coverage of multiple job boards, all in one flat fee (clue’s in the name).
When advertising your position using a flat fee recruitment service, the recruiter will do loads of things to try to ensure your advert gets maximum coverage, and your perfect candidates apply.
Your advert will be accessible to over 20 million job seekers across all the major boards. Also, it will be optimised, meaning that you will get the most coverage possible. This increases its relevance on search engines, which is based around how many times key words are repeated.
Your applications will then be screened, so that you don’t have to sort through tons of irrelevant applications, and can just have the best candidates put in front of you. At Crunchposter we also add notes to applications, so that our clients know exactly why we’ve ranked applications in the way we have.
Also, if your adverts aren’t performing as well as expected, we can resource the position using the database of 15 million CVs at our fingertips. We can also search on multiple job boards or social media sites in order to find candidates who may not be actively searching and applying for roles, but are perfect for your position.
The Pros
An obvious benefit of this service is that it is way cheaper to fill your vacancy than using a recruitment agency. This is because agencies tend to charge commission fees (around 15%), and this can become pretty pricey, especially when hiring multiple candidates. On the other hand, with flat fee recruitment you can hire one candidate or fifty, and you only have to pay one price.
Unlike job board advertising, when your applications come in they are screened and ranked in order of relevance. This means that you don’t have to spend hours going through irrelevant apps, as the flat fee recruiter will do this for you.
Another advantage is that your advert will be posted branded, which has lots of benefits. Branded advertising brings in much better brand exposure, and attracts more and better candidates – meaning that you will have a lower dropout rate when it comes to the interview stage. Job boards such as Monster highly recommend posting branded adverts, stating that “Premium templates result in more applications for the client”.
The Cons
One drawback when using Flat Fee Recruitment is that for very specialist roles, it can be harder to fill without the help of a Recruitment Consultant (at an Agency) who knows exactly what kind of candidate your role needs.
Also, a drawback of the branded advertising you receive is that your competitors will see exactly what you’re hiring for and the salary you are willing to pay for the position. This means that they can (and probably will) compete with you, in order to gain the best candidates for themselves.