In-House vs. Recruitment Agency: What’s Best For Hiring Learning Tech Talent?

Getting the right talent in the right places is one of the greatest challenges for any business, but it is particularly important for companies looking to create a robust digital learning solution. The right recruitment strategy is therefore crucial to find the right professionals, with in-house solutions being ideal for some roles, while other, more niche roles, are better found using a specialist recruitment agency.

Looking for a specialist learning and development recruitment agency that can find you the eLearning talent that you need? With years of demonstrable experience elevating countless established brands like King’s College London and Edinburgh University, we can help you to create a robust eLearning solution by providing you with the digital experts that you won’t find anywhere else.

Like the sound of our expertise? Contact us now to find out how we can help your business progress and explore the many benefits of choosing a recruitment agency below.

The Importance of Hiring the Right Digital Learning Experts

As the world of digital learning grows exponentially, the already limited talent pool of eLearning experts is stretched, making the space incredibly competitive when it comes to finding the very best specialists. It’s therefore crucial that you get your recruitment strategy correct, giving you the best chance to find and hire the specialists with the right knowledge, skills and expertise. Following this method of best practice, you can:

• Deliver an effective learning solution: Make use of highly-skilled digital experts to create interactive lessons that incorporate cutting-edge technology innovations such as AI, VR and gamification.

• Remain competitive in a rapidly changing market: As the eLearning world evolves to incorporate new technologies, by hiring the best talent, you can keep up with industry expectations, streamline onboarding and provide a robust upskilling solution.

• Avoid the cost of a bad hire: A bad hire can have a detrimental impact on the productivity of your company. Damaging team synergy while also harming your potential profitability, you should put in place a comprehensive hiring procedure to avoid a bad hire.

The Positives and Negatives of In-House Recruitment

If you choose to use your own in-house team to recruit, it means funnelling time, money and resources into a range of hiring responsibilities, including:

• Writing and posting job descriptions and advertisements
• Screening CVs and applications
• Conducting interviews and any further assessments

The Advantages of Hiring In-House

From saving money to making sure that new hires have a deep understanding of the company culture, there are several advantages to hiring eLearning talent through an in-house recruitment team.

• Lower direct costs: If you’re the kind of company that has ongoing recruitment needs, opting for an in-house solution could be more cost-effective for you in the long run. This is because once your hiring team and the necessary tools are established, the cost of recruitment goes down considerably, especially once you consider that you’re not paying any agency fees.

• Informed understanding of company culture: If you choose to partner with the wrong recruitment agency, you may find that they have a poor understanding of your company culture. By hiring in-house, you eliminate this possibility, with those already in the company having an informed understanding of the values needed to excel and the long-term goals that new hires should be aligned with.

• Swift communication: Recruiting the right people can take time, but when you hire using an in-house team, you may experience a more streamlined process where communication is fluid. In a competitive field where finding and hiring the best experts is essential, this communication could be the difference between you finding the professionals that you need and not.

• Better candidate experience: The wrong recruitment agency can sometimes feel like a blockade between a candidate and the job they’re actually applying for. This can change their perception of the process and may even lead them to pull their application altogether. When using an in-house team, you can speak directly to the candidate, communicating the company’s culture while sharing key insights.

• Take charge of the process: Bringing your recruitment needs in-house allows you to fully take charge of the hiring process. This means that you can change a job description quickly depending on different market needs and easily pivot on your hiring priorities.

The Disadvantages of In-House Recruitment

But, while in-house recruitment can make the hiring process easy for some companies, for others it will prove unsuitable for their workload and onboarding requirements.

• Higher fixed cost: While you might save on money that would’ve been sent to a specialist recruitment agency, taking hiring responsibilities in-house will see an increase in hidden costs, such as higher fixed spending on aspects such as salaries and investment in specialist tools. If you’re a business that isn’t consistently hiring, you may not see a strong return on your investment.

• Limited candidate access: Where an in-house team excels in their company knowledge, they lose out in their limited access to a wide range of specialist candidates. After all, these in-house teams are not specialist recruitment agencies, so they don’t have access to the impressive talent pools and professional networks that businesses like us at Instinct Resourcing have!

• Time-consuming: In-house recruitment responsibilities are often given to HR teams who already have existing tasks that take up their time and resources. This may lead to a team that is over capacity and overwhelmed with the responsibilities they have, making them less efficient in the process.

• Potentially longer hiring times: If the in-house team is preoccupied with other responsibilities, the hiring process may take longer than if you’d opted for a recruitment agency to take care of things. This risks your company not getting the specialists you need in good time, missing out on potential growth opportunities.

• Limited industry knowledge: While your in-house team will have a comprehensive knowledge of the company and its culture, they may not have the specialist insight that means finding the best, most technically gifted eLearning candidates. If you want to advertise for an instructional design job, an LMS job or another specialist role, choose Instinct to do it for you, and we’ll find you definitive professionals.

Why You Might Choose In-House Recruitment

In-house recruitment teams are ideal for established brands that can already draw large amounts of quality candidates and are regularly posting positions. In addition, SMEs may choose in-house recruitment to take full control of the hiring process and save on external agency fees if they don’t hire regularly. Yet, choosing in-house recruiters may mean missing out on the quality candidates for niche, specialist roles that can be found in diverse talent pools.

The Advantages and Challenges of Hiring with a Recruitment Agency

Opting for a specialist IT online learning recruiter like Instinct Resourcing is one of the easiest ways for you to find the eLearning specialists that you need as quickly as possible. When working with a digital learning recruiter, you can enjoy:

• Access to an impressive talent pool of experts.
• Pace and efficiency – getting you who you need as quickly as possible.
• A complete solution – from screening candidates to onboarding and even aftercare.

The Advantages of Hiring eLearning Experts With a Recruitment Agency

Recruitment agencies are ready-made to handle your hiring needs, with there being several advantages to their use, particularly in the eLearning sector.

• Rapid recruitment: We can’t speak for every single recruitment agency, but if you’re looking for contracted digital learning specialists, we can source them for you in just 24 hours. In general, thanks to the dedicated teams working on your recruitment efforts, agencies will be far quicker and more effective when finding you the experts that you need to elevate your operations.

• Contract or permanent roles: With the limited people power of your in-house team, you may only be focused on one specific kind of hire, but agencies like Instinct Resourcing can find you contracted candidates as well as permanent employees.

• Specialist knowledge: Instinct Resourcing, alongside other digital learning specialists, has knowledge and expertise that your in-house team likely doesn’t. Since we work in the eLearning sector on a daily basis, we know what professionals are available and how best to attract them to your business.

• Comprehensive support: We can give you full support from start to finish, perfecting your hiring process. This means screening and organising interviews for potential candidates and even assisting with onboarding and aftercare. A good recruitment agency will improve the quality of the hiring process, giving confidence and guidance to applicants throughout the entire process.

• Easily scalable: Need several roles to be filled all at once? Recruitment agencies can be utilised to fulfil this need, scaling their activity to meet your specific requirements. If you’re looking for rapid growth, partner with Instinct Resourcing today.

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The Challenges of Using a Recruitment Agency to Hire eLearning Specialists

The recruitment process can be challenging, so no matter if you opt to hire in-house or through a specialist agency, you may come across difficulties, including:

• Increased costs: Specialist recruitment agencies will charge for their services, with this price often being more than you would pay for an in-house team. While this may seem like a negative, you could find that you save money in the long run thanks to the pace and efficiency that such agencies work at.

• Less direct control: When using a recruitment agency, they will take full control over the hiring process, giving you less control over who will and who won’t be screened for an interview. As a small, boutique service that can drill down into exactly the kind of hires you’re looking for, we can align our search with what you need.

• Less knowledge of company culture: External recruiters rarely have the same level of understanding of your company values as you do. As a result, if you choose an external recruiter, you run the risk of onboarding a bad hire. By taking part in a comprehensive onboarding process with you, we eradicate this possibility, ensuring that we’re aligned on exactly what kind of individual you’re looking for before ensuring that they comprehend the company’s values and desires for future growth.

Why You Might Choose a Specialist eLearning Recruitment Agency

While choosing a specialist digital recruitment agency like Instinct Resourcing involves an additional investment and taking your hands off the steering wheel when it comes to the hiring process, a company may choose this process if:

• They need quick, professional hires
• They need access to niche candidates in a competitive market
• They want to take their internal focus away from recruitment
• They’re looking for multiple roles, both contracted and permanent

If this sounds like your business or situation, then contact us today to discover what we can do to help you elevate your eLearning offerings. Effortlessly able to find you the specialists that you need, we work across several sectors, including technology and the NHS, to fulfil the eLearning jobs that you’re looking for.

Want someone to take charge of your eLearning responsibilities? Allow Instinct Resourcing to take the reins.