Myths perpetuated by external recruitment firms seeking to discredit their internal rivals

As we have said, banks are keen to reduce their reliance on expensive external recruitment firms and to increase their use of cheaper recruiters employed in-house.

External recruitment firms are predictably disaffected by this, and they point out that internal recruiters are often not up to the job. To make their case, external recruiters have been known to circulate the allegations and anecdotes below. These may be groundless, but we thought internal recruiters should know - if only in the interest of self defence.

1) Internal recruiters spoil the market

Given that banks' default position is to try and fill roles using internal recruiters, vacancies are handed to internal recruiters first. Only when internal recruiters have failed to fill them are external recruiters summoned. By this time, many otherwise viable candidates will have been ineptly approached already.

"We're handed mandates all the time that internal recruiters haven't been able to fulfil," alleges one external consultant. "This makes it hard: I came across one very senior candidate who'd been approached by email and then ignored when he queried his suitability for the job."

2) Internal recruiters are not interested in the best candidates

Line managers want the best candidates because they know that additional revenues will compensate for any additional expense. Line managers communicate this to external recruiters who unearth excellent, but expensive people.

On the other hand, internal recruiters are only interested in budgets, and will block good hires, even if they make business sense.

"A line manager made an excellent candidate an offer," relates one external recruiter, "and then the internal recruitment function got wind of the fact that the candidate was out of budget. They interviewed the candidate again, claimed he answered their questions inappropriately, and pulled the offer."

3) Internal recruiters know nothing

External recruitment firms specialise in particular markets and particular job categories. Internal recruiters don't.

"They're totally out of touch," says one headhunter. "We, for example, are in contact with quant developers all the time so that we know who's in the market. The internal people only contact them once in a while when they have a role to fill."

4) Internal recruiters have their own agenda

Internal recruiters stand accused of nefarious going on.

On one hand, it's alleged that they leak CVs to recruitment firms with whom they have links. On the other, it's claimed that cunning internal recruitment types are merely biding their time before they make off with the bank's database of candidates and start an external recruitment firm of their own.

5) Internal recruiters are overly reliant on LinkedIn

While external recruitment firms have large and comprehensive databases covering their entire area of specialism, internal recruiters often don't. As a result, they have little option but to bombard people with emails through LinkedIn.

"They are under-resourced and over ambitious," says one external recruiter. "They use LinkedIn too much, and can be annoying."

Internal recruiters are invited to defend themselves below.