Not every vacancy needs outside help. Plenty of businesses fill roles perfectly well through their own networks, job boards and internal HR teams. But there are moments when trying to manage recruitment in-house starts costing more than it saves, in time, in team capacity and in the quality of who ends up walking through the door.
So, when should you use a recruitment agency? Below are seven signs it might be time to bring in specialist finance recruitment support, plus what to look for if you do.
1. The Role Has Been Vacant for Too Long
A vacancy doesn’t just sit quietly in the background. Every week it stays open, someone else is covering the workload, deadlines slip and management time gets pulled away from other priorities. Add up lost productivity, overtime and the ongoing recruitment costs of running your own search, and the hiring cost of a slow fill often outweighs what it would have cost to bring in expert help sooner.
2. You’re Getting Applications, But Not the Right Candidates
A full inbox doesn’t mean you have a strong shortlist. Generating applications is easy, but attracting candidates who actually meet the brief is much harder. If you’re spending hours screening resumes that don’t match what you need, the problem usually isn’t your job ad. It’s the pool it’s reaching.
3. You’re Recruiting for a Specialist or Difficult-to-Fill Role
Some roles need more than a job listing. Niche technical positions, senior appointments and roles in tightly held sectors often require someone who already understands the market. They can identify who’s out there, what they’re paid, and what will actually get them to consider a move. A recruitment agency for employers with established networks in your industry can shortcut a search that would otherwise take months.
4. The Best Candidates Aren’t Applying
Most of the strongest people for your role aren’t browsing job boards. Recent industry data suggests around 70% of professionals are passive candidates. This means, they’re not actively job hunting, but are open to the right opportunity if it’s put in front of them. Specialist recruiters reach this group through targeted approaches, headhunting, industry networks and their own talent databases, sourcing people who’d never have seen your ad in the first place.
5. Your Internal Team Doesn’t Have the Time or Resources
Advertising, screening, interviewing, coordinating candidates, checking references and negotiating offers all take time, and most hiring managers are already doing this on top of a full workload. A recruitment agency can manage some or all of these stages, freeing your team to focus on running the business rather than running the hiring process.
6. You’re Making a Senior, Executive or Confidential Hire
Executive recruitment comes with different demands. These searches often need to be discreet, particularly when replacing someone still in the role, and they benefit from market mapping and direct approaches rather than public advertising. Recruitment consultants who specialise in senior appointments know how to run this kind of search without tipping off the wider market.
7. You’ve Made the Wrong Hire Before
A bad hire is expensive. According to Scale Suite, the true cost of hiring the wrong person, once recruitment, onboarding, lost productivity and team disruption are factored in, at anywhere from 30% to 150% of the employee’s first-year salary. Understanding the full hiring costs involved, not just the agency fee or ad spend, makes it easier to see why a more structured recruitment and assessment process pays for itself.
Choosing the Right Recruitment Agency
Not all recruitment services are the same, and picking the wrong one can leave you back where you started. Here’s what to look for:
- Specialist industry knowledge rather than a generalist approach across every sector
- Established networks to reach candidates who aren’t actively searching
- A clear, transparent process, from briefing through to offer
- An understanding of your work culture, not just the role description
Before committing to a search, it’s worth asking any agency to break down their fee against your likely costs of hiring internally, including advertising, screening time and the risk of a mis-hire. A transparent recruiter should be able to show you the full cost to hire an employee through each route, not just their own rate card.
At Godfrey Group, we’ve spent almost two decades recruiting specifically for financial services and wealth management. That experience means we understand the roles, the market and the calibre of candidates our clients need, without the ramp-up time a generalist agency would require.
Struggling to find the right person for your team? Speak to a Godfrey Group recruitment specialist about your hiring requirements.
