The process of sourcing, screening, and selecting people for a certain job or position at a company or organisation refers to recruitments. Generally, there are four main types of agencies in a recruitment industry: employment agency, recruitment websites and job search engines, head hunters, and in-house recruitment. Further, recruitment goes to a certain process of sourcing the applicants through various methods such as advertising and screening and selecting potential candidates with the use of series of tests or interviews. It is a common practice nowadays that job hiring goes through a recruitment process and the recruitment agencies are being paid by the companies and not the applicants.

Traditionally, recruitment agencies are also known as employment agencies. With employment agencies, candidates visit the physical location a brief interview and an assessment before being taken onto the agency’s books. The recruitment consultants then will try to match their pool of candidates to their clients’ open positions. Suitable candidates are with potential employers. Usually there are two forms in which the services of the employment agencies are paid. One is through a contingency fee that is paid by the company when a recommended candidate accepts a job with the client company (typically 20%-30% of the candidate’s starting salary), which usually has some form of guarantee, should the candidate fail to perform and is terminated within a set period of time. The other is the advance payment which will serve as a retainer.

Currently, the job websites have been popular among the jobseekers and employers. These sites have two main features: job boards and a resume or Curriculum Vitae (CV) database which allow member companies to post job vacancies and allow candidates to upload their résumé to be included in searches by member companies respectively. Further, certain fees are necessarily charged for posting jobs or for accessing or searching resumes. On the other hand, the job search engine has also been the more recent trend. With the emergence of vertical search engines, the job-seekers can search across multiple websites. In addition, a number of these new search engines index and list the advertisements of traditional job boards. Such vertical search engines allow job-seekers to find new positions that may not be advertised on traditional job boards, and online recruitment websites.

Meanwhile, the third type is the head hunter—a slang which means a third-party recruiter–seeks out candidates, often when there is failure of the normal recruitment process. More aggressive than in-house recruiters, head hunters employ the use of different techniques to lure potential candidates and convince them for various vacant positions. Often, head hunters are members in good standing of industry trade groups and associations. As such, head hunters could be seen attending trade shows and other meetings nationally or even internationally where potential candidates and hiring managers may also be attending. Lastly, large companies, with the use of the human resource department, have their own in-house recruitment. Usually, in-house recruiters may advertise job vacancies on their own websites, coordinate certain schemes, employ campus recruitment, etc.