It can be incredibly hard trying to find a new gig without any help. You spend days and nights surfing the job boards and company websites looking for the next great thing. You have email subscriptions for new job alerts, you follow companies on Twitter, and consistently tailor your resume so that it gets past the gatekeepers and filters. You have a bunch of tools and knowledge at your disposal to make your search more efficient. But what’s the one thing you’re missing?

The right relationships.

The candidates successfully finding interviews and landing jobs aren’t just good on paper. They’re also good at building relationships and communicating. Often times, it’s not just with people inside the companies they’re targeting. They make use of an abundant resource that I’ve come to know well because of my own work experience. They work with recruiters at staffing agencies, also known more colloquially as headhunters.

There are a ton of staffing agencies with experienced recruiters building relationships with small , medium and large companies. And with those relationships come trust, which you can leverage to get your foot in the door. If that’s not enough, let me give you three reasons you need to consider working with staffing agency recruiters.

1) Hiring managers are busy people. Sometimes they need outside recruiters to so that they can focus on running their business and not reading a ton of resumes.

Depending on the size of the organization or criticalness of the need, they may not have the time to comb through hundreds of resumes or wait for good applicants to roll in. An in-house job search could last for three to six months if not more depending on the role.

Many successful candidates know that good staffing agency recruiters have a bunch of talented candidates – both employed and between jobs –readily available for new opportunities. When a recruiter is looking for someone with skills you possess, you want them to think about you. That’s not possible if you’re not building relationships with them.

2) Over time good recruiters learn exactly what their clients need and develop a candidate pool they can leverage as soon as an opening surfaces.

For hiring managers that have built relationships with staffing agencies over time, they know that the recruiters understand their business and the skills and character traits that’ll allow a candidate to be successful there. When your application comes through a staffing agency, it’s less likely that the hiring manager will ask “Does this candidate really have the basic skills we’re looking for?” Think about it. You’ve been prescreened!

3) Headhunters often have access to positions that aren’t posted on their clients’ websites.

Sometimes a company is backfilling a role that has a person in it…but they don’t want that person to know. Unfortunate? Yes. But when you’re looking for a job, do you always tell your manager? Chances are you don’t. This is no different. This point aside, hiring managers may not want to be inundated with resumes and phone calls from potential candidates curious about the opportunity.

So rather than post the position, they’ll work closely with trusted staffing agencies to find the right candidates in a shorter time. So when you see a job description that leads back to the staffing agency, don’t fret, get discouraged, or move on to the next job description. Make the call and learn more. Not picking up the phone or sending an email could cost you the job of your dreams.

These are just three reasons that you need to consider working with staffing agency recruiters to find your next job. They’re an abundant resource that – if they’re good – have an abundant client list. And who knows? One of those clients could be the one that’ll allows you to live the professional life you’ve been coveting for some time.

Rich Jones is a Pathfinder for Professionals with a knack for helping the wayward determine the next steps of their careers. He’s also a certified professional in Human Resources with for-profit and non-profit recruiting experience. Check Rich out on his career blog I Am Rich Jones.