The Benefits of Outsourcing Recruitment for Water and Utility Projects

Recruitment, Tech Services

February 3, 2025

Casting A Wide Net:

Recruitment agencies can be specialists in one of two ways. Firstly, of course, as experts on the hiring process itself and what it demands; and secondly, as key insight sources on the way a particular field interacts with the hiring market, such as marketing, engineering, or in our case, the water and utility industry. Some of the main things that make a recruitment process agile are expertise, extensive networks, and access to a wide pool of candidates. Recruiters are experts when it comes to effectively identifying, screening, and presenting qualified candidates, all of which significantly reduces downtime on an open role. But more importantly, recruiters work with a golden ticket we like to call the passive market.

It is estimated that out of professionals willing to move from their current job, only 20% of them are actively taking steps to find a new role. The rest of them – 80 percent of all professionals willing to make a move – are what we call passive. While these people cannot be identified through LinkedIn or Indeed, recruiters spend every week building relationships with them, checking in on their situation and what they’re looking for. They understand the key elements that would make them go from passive to engaged in a hiring process. Outsourcing your hiring needs gives you entry to a network of talent you would otherwise be unable to access.

Get Your Brand Name Out There:

The maths is simple – the more people who know about your business, the more likely they are to look into working with you. Recruitment agencies move in large networks of talent; with strong relationships and/or memberships with online platforms, job and CV boards, and industry network groups. If you were to set up personal accounts to every platform where your job ad can reach the kind of talent you’d want, you’d be advertising at a much higher cost than by letting agencies promote the job openings for you. The amount spent in-house on advertising and sourcing tools can quickly add up over time.

Many agencies have dedicated digital spaces for information about your business and team, like we do on our individual Jobs pages, which is far more interesting for a candidate than a listing on the vacancies page of your website. In fact, Candidates are almost twice as likely to apply when a job highlights an employer’s branded content. Recruiters are experts when it comes to the kind of advertisement that makes top talent stop and listen, and they can advise you on the branding elements of your hiring strategy overall.

Beyond simply getting your job in front of potential recruits, hiring a new role involves taking on various administrative tasks. From sourcing and screening CVs, to scheduling and conducting interviews, and coordinating communication between different teams and individuals, it’s a job on top of a job. This means your dedicated HR team (who is likely to already have a desk full of tasks to complete), is now responsible for a massive undertaking that takes priority and eats up all their time. Engaging a recruitment agency transfers all of these tasks from your team to the agency, letting your internal team focus on your always-crucial core activities.

Liberate Your Team’s Time:

When you look at the pace at which recruitment demands change, this is even more important. The job market is global. It demands experience managing international talent, right of work, knowledge about transferable certifications, and all the additional admin that comes with these issues. Once again, more things to think about when hiring. Interacting with candidates every day, as specialist recruiters do, means experience managing all this.

For any interim hiring process, this arrangement has an even bigger time and resource-saving impact on your business! All employee management is carried out by the agency, freeing up even more resources for your team.

The Real Cost-efficient Choice:

After speaking to an agency, your instinct might be to simply compare their fee against the assumed zero cost of internal hiring, but your numbers would be missing a big part of the picture. That zero is actually not real.

There will always be a limit to the resources available in-house. Managing priorities leads to in-house recruitment processes often taking longer to fill; and time, as we all know, is money. The average cost of replacing an employee in the UK is 4-9 months of their annual salary. That is 20-75% of their salary. For senior roles, this inflates further up to 213% of a salary.

Meaning, your goal with hiring is to limit downtime between employees, and lower the resources needed to get new talent up to speed. [see: https://centrichr.co.uk/what-is-the-true-cost-of-replacing-an-employee/]

The Best Part- We Love Doing It!

Recruitment agencies are able to manage recruitment efficiently, leverage their expertise and candidate networks, and accelerate the hiring process. By filling positions faster, agencies help you avoid long period of time between employees, allowing your organisation to continue their important work without delay. Due to the reach of their passive network, they can also help you find those golden individuals who need less time to hit the ground running.

Ultimately, outsourcing recruitment for water and utility projects is a much more cost-effective choice than many businesses think it is. It isn’t fee vs. nothing. The expertise of specialist recruiters in your industry, their access to talent, ability to deliver high-quality candidates, and reduced administrative burdens, contribute to significant savings over the in-house pathway.

If you have a role to fill, or just want to have an initial chat with any of the Aqua-Tech recruitment team – simply drop us an email at recruitment@aqua-tech.co.uk, contact us via the website or connect with any of the team who you can find listed in our meet the team page. We can really help!