Should I move my agency career in-house?

A recruiter's dilemma

Over the last few years I have done quite a bit of mentoring through the wonderful mentoring club in Berlin. The question that comes up a lot is agency career or inhouse, which is best.

There is no shortage of lively debate about the differences and similarities between the two worlds, hopefully in this article I’ll try and help you when you are faced with making the choice yourself.

Let’s start further back though, back to that first decision in recruiting. I’ll assume for this article that you are starting out in agency land.

The first big recruitment decision is (drum roll) where to recruit, by this I mean, sector and location. If you get these two choices right you should never leave agency.

Example; finance recruitment or a high salary sector like, investment banking, big dollar consulting or white collar management. If you are successful and love the money stay agency side. You will almost always earn much less if you move in-house.

But money is not the only reason why you want to leave an agency?

Failed recruiters move inhouse.

I did and I failed. Sounds harsh, but if I had made the right sector and location choices very early on I would have stayed in agency, but only for the money. Agency sucks which is why people not raking in 100/200k a year make the move. That’s not to say I wouldn’t go back, but now 20 years on I know much more and I guess hindsight is a great thing that nobody has. I ended up internally by accident, not sure I would have made a conscious decision to move, but not earning 200k a year in agency was a factor 🤣.

I still want to move inhouse

Good on you, you can expect to be much more engaged in the whole hiring process. You can build a reputable online status. Influence hiring decisions and climb the corporate ladder. From a day-to-day on the job experience perspective, inhouse wins all day long.

Getting strategic in your role adds a new flavour and your new nemesis is the agency recruiters you left behind. It’s not that you don’t love them but internally you will face pressure to cut agency spend at every turn if your company does use them. They have a place, but they blow your budgets out the water.

People looking for an easy internal job are probably going to be in for a surprise. The job can be much harder. The freedoms afforded by running an agency desk, like stacking up the jobs to hit your numbers and dropping clients because the roles are difficult are a thing of the past when you work internal.

Also you can say goodbye to the top sales person trips to Dubai, flashy motors and insane paychecks.

Career Progression

Agency first, large corporate, high turnover in the lower ranks plenty of manager jobs.

Mid size agency same as before but with less manager jobs. Potential to earn high, probability of leaving to start your own agency high.

Small agency; either awesome stay forever or the worst experience of your life and you leave recruitment.

Inhouse there is even less career progression. People generally get promoted by leaving and going somewhere else. Think pyramid and bear in mind the apex may not be a recruiter.

Stability

If you are smashing it in a successful agency then you are as safe as it gets.

If you are inhouse my advice would be, always be looking for a new role. Seriously and especially in tech recruiting. The continual over hiring and shrinking cycles will drive you mad.

I know what you’re thinking, what about a halfway-house. A recruitment outsourcing provider (RPO). These come in varying shapes and sizes. Where they get the win is in cost to the client. They win over agencies because they are cheaper, but. This comes at a price, they offer little of no career progression and very little job security unless they are one of the “big boys” in RPO.

They do seem to be a good stepping off point for agency recruiters to go full inhouse, so churn can be high, which leads to customer retention and service continuity problems (tell me I’m wrong).

Finally

If you are looking for a real career in the long-term and not a short-term big buck and early retirement then moving inhouse is definitely worth considering.

I have seen people move sideways into HR or L&D, even into UX, engineering and the product space. You will generally meet a much more diverse set of colleagues and get the opportunity to work and travel all over the world.

Conversely if you are raking in the dollars and working in an evergreen sector like finance or legal in the agency space then I would say, stay put.