It’s a fact of life you get out of it what you put into it.
Same with recruitment.
If you’re a business using an external recruiter and you give your vacancy to 4 agencies, you’re basically committing to each of them 25% as you don’t trust one of them 100%.
So, with this in mind, why be surprised to hear your vacancy is a line on a whiteboard, with a salary banding, your business name, location and fee% on it which no one will take any notice of unless one of the copy and paste JD adverts they’ve slung out on indeed or whatever happens to get a nibble.
Why should you expect more, this is about 25% of their time (usually less after the first week), but that’s what you gave them so why would they give you more.
Now before you think I’m poking the bear, I know at least 80% of the ‘retained’ recruiters out there do nothing different to the above with maybe a bit of headhunting (see InMails on LinkedIn) thrown in.
It’s a sham that retained recruiters are somehow better than anyone else unless they provide a better service, have a better network, provide a better selection process and take away oodles of your pain points and save you time as well as money by placing candidates that stay.
My point is this, if you find a recruiter who can offer you something better than the rest, why wouldn’t you retain them before your competitor does?