Specialist Recruiter vs In-House Hiring | What’s Best for Your Business?
After a challenging period, hiring activity appears to be rebounding, with Symphony Talent’s 2025 Talent Acquisition Report highlighting that 53% of organisations expect to ramp up their recruitment activity later this year. However, paradoxically, only 41% say they plan to increase their budgets, suggesting that managers will need to identify how to extract the most value from their efforts.
Specialist Recruiter vs In-House Talent Teams: What's The Smart Choice?
In this situation, it can be tempting to say ‘we can do this ourselves’ and to ‘insource’ recruitment internally. However, for employers seeking highly specialised communications and marketing skills, this could be a mistake. That’s why we have outlined the benefits of working with a specialist recruiter over an in-house team and reviewed why now, more than ever, it’s highly recommended to partner with a specialist.
The Cost of Getting It Wrong
At the broadest level, few organisations can afford to get their hiring wrong. Most will be facing financial and economic pressures brought on by a range of external factors. Frankly, the last thing they need is for the recruitment process to be extended over a long period, potentially leaving the vacancy open for months, and increasing costs further. While budgets are flat, organisational expectations remain high, and inefficient recruitment will only lead to time and money being poorly spent.
However, this appears to be a common occurrence, with the Talent Acquisition Outlook Report revealing that one in three TA leaders report growing dissatisfaction with hiring outcomes, largely due to poor qualification of candidates and inadequate use of technology. When we consider that the cost of a bad hire is estimated to be between 50% and 300% of the individual’s basic salary, making these mistakes is expensive and potentially damaging.
Specialist Depth vs In-House Breadth
The key element to keep in mind when deliberating between working with a specialist or doing it yourself is depth over breadth. Organisations solely focused on recruiting within specific markets will have deeper knowledge and larger networks, whereas inhouse hiring teams are required to cover a huge range of divisions and opportunities, and will likely be involved in sourcing a range of professionals from administrative staff, finance experts and comms specialists, to name a few.
Split Focus, Slower Results
In-house teams' focus is often split in multiple directions, which, when resources are already tight, can mean that they don’t have the time they would like and often need to invest in supporting the long-term engagement with niche candidates. And while internal recruiters provide excellent support, they may be missing the nuanced knowledge or networks that a specialist recruiter brings to complex or specialist roles. That can lead to delays, poor-quality hires, or worse, vacancies going unfilled.
Speed and precision are also core benefits offered by the best agencies. If you owned a Ferrari, you would want to take it to a specialist garage, rather than the local one down the road, and the same principle applies with hiring. Marketing and communications professionals are on the front line and act as the face and voice of the organisation. They are crucial hires that few employers cannot afford to get wrong. It’s therefore advisable to give the process the respect it warrants in order to drive the required results.
Strategic Insight & Data
Another interesting finding from the report was that a startling 85% of talent acquisition professionals say they lack full visibility into the recruitment funnel. Without access to this data, the vast majority of internal hiring teams will struggle to find ways to make improvements or to demonstrate ROI on their activity. Specialist consultancies, on the other hand, do far more than just fill roles, and the best firms in the market offer end-to-end insights into the entire hiring journey, covering attraction, engagement, interviews, through to offer acceptance.
If organisations want to understand why candidates are dropping out mid-way through the process, or which areas of a job specification need optimising, for example, they will struggle to get the data and insights if the in-house team doesn’t have access to it. The best agencies, on the other hand, measure and monitor throughout, and are therefore best placed to advise on adaptations that can optimise overall hiring activity.
Identifying a Specialist Recruitment Partner
Firms that are fully focused on one portion of the market are also often experts at delivering a quality candidate experience, which naturally forms a core part of a company’s employer brand. A clunky application process, lack of communication or generic job descriptions all feed into the perception of the business, and in a digital-first and highly competitive market, they matter now more than ever. These teams work relentlessly to protect the employer and offer personalised communication, regular feedback loops and can fully represent the brand’s values and culture authentically.
It seems that economic uncertainty, increasing hiring pressure, skills shortages, and rising dissatisfaction with current hiring models are all converging. Leaders must now choose whether to stay reactive and attempt to source the skills they need on their own or evolve with precision, insight, and agility, and partner with a true specialist. VMA GROUP's team acts as a strategic partner that has a full and detailed knowledge of the worlds of marketing, communication and digital recruitment, and understands the challenges faced by internal hiring professionals.
If you're looking for support in hiring your next communications or marketing specialists, get in touch with our expert team today.
