Choosing Between Recruitment Agencies for Your First Recruitment Consultant Job

International recruitment groups.
Usually household brands that most people would recognized these recruitment agencies usually have many offices based in many countries around the world. With their size and structure come many benefits. Training course are likely to be thorough and ongoing through you employment. In addition, there will likely be many development opportunities to aim for, even though this may require moving to different offices or even overseas. So if you are an ambitious person looking for a progressive career this will suit you well. Perhaps the only down side is that large recruitment agencies often break the process down into several roles with resourcers, consultants, account manager and business developers. Consequently you may only learn a relatively narrow recruitment role in these types of agency.

Single office but multiple sector agencies.
In these recruitment agencies you may be in charge of a 'desk'. This being the term given to a particular recruitment sector within a company. The chances are that this is a company that once specialized on a particular sector and has now branched out into other, possibly related sectors. the plus of this type of recruitment agency is that you will likely have a more autonomous role and will handle all of the recruitment process from business development, to resourcing through to making placements. With this greater responsibility comes greater pressure. If results aren't good enough there's no one else to blame! Training in these companies may well be limited to spending some time with an established consultant to asking a director for specific help when you need it.

Contract recruitment agencies.
These offer a very different type of recruitment role. In comparison to the highs and lows of the permanent recruitment role, these jobs tend to be more account management jobs. You will manage a number of clients who have regular needs for contract workers such as nurses or teachers and your job will be to source people at short notice to meet their needs. Your performance will be very much dependent on your ability to manage both clients and candidates. Meeting client requirements for staff is one thing which can be complicate by issues such as poor attendance of your contract workers, or simply poor job performance.

Small and specialist recruitment agencies.
Not for the faint hearted these agencies are usually under 5 staff and set up by a former consultant or manager from this industry. In such a small recruitment agency, when things go well or badly, everybody feels the bumps. That said, overheads are much lower than their bigger counterparts meaning that good performance is often rewarded with much high bonuses. Training can be very limited and promotion opportunities internally can also be very limited. However, this is excellent experience whatever your ambitions. If you have hopes of one day setting up your own agency, this type of environment is a must.

Recruitment jobs are more attractive than ever.
In an economy where everyone seems to be feeling the pinch most recruitment agencies seem to be thriving. With the variation in types of agencies above there should be something for everybody's needs.

Recruitment Agency
Different types of recruitment agency within the UK recruitment sector.