Lily Shippen Recruitment Agency | How to choose the best temp agency

When looking for the right temp agency in Manchester, it’s understandable to feel overwhelmed by the amount of choice on offer. Even if we narrow it down to admin recruitment, the list still seems endless. However, this variety of choice also comes with a variety of quality. Therefore, it’s important to know what to look for in a good recruitment agency.

From both a client and a candidate’s perspective, it’s essential to choose an agency that’s well-respected in the market. As a client, this ensures your role will attract the most skilled candidates and give you a wide choice of individuals to employ. From a candidate’s perspective, your CV will be given the best chance of falling into the right hands.

An easy way to find out which recruitment agencies are well-respected is through Google and TrustPilot. Almost every admin and PA recruitment agency will feature on these sites, along with enough reviews to paint a good picture of the quality of a company. Word-of-mouth also remains one of the best ways in gauging quality. Speak to your friends and colleagues to find out where they have had a good experience. The opinion of someone you know and trust can be worth so much more than hundreds of reviews by strangers.

When registering with a temp agency, there are a few things to look out for. One of the first things an agency should do is confirm the candidate’s Right to Work with a copy of their passport and relevant visas. A good recruitment agency will always invite the candidates in for a face-to-face meeting with a consultant. In doing this, the consultant finds out much more about the candidate than what’s on their CV. It’s especially important for an admin recruitment agency to find out the personality of their candidates as this enables them to be placed in a role that fits the individual as well as the company. Finally, check their process in temporary recruitment. The best agencies will put as much care into their temp staff as they do with their permanent. Online timesheets have made life much easier for temp staff and clients. As well as saving trees, they make the whole process much quicker.

Choose your agency wisely. To begin with, it may seem like a good idea to register with all the Manchester-based recruitment agencies you can find. However, you’ll soon realise that the extra admin this creates is not worth the hassle. Instead, go for quality over quantity. Using the advice above, find two agencies that best fit the criteria. This increases your chances of finding only quality CVs in your inbox, instead of having to sift through the duplicates and less qualified applications yourself.