It can be hard to attract and retain the right kind of talent. Hiring the wrong employee has the potential to tank your business if they cost you a contract completely.
And clients? Clients aren’t forgiving. Not in today’s market. They have plenty of your competitors they can turn to. Competition that outnumbers you in the same way the number of stars in the sky outnumber the earth.
So hiring a professional staffing services agency might be smarter than you think. It’s not a bad idea to leave it to the professionals sometimes. This article will look at why businesses are turning to staffing services in today’s market and will tell you what you need to know about them.
Why Use Staffing Services?
Why spend time and resources setting up recruitment infrastructure when you’re going to ignore them after your hiring needs are met completely? This is an incredibly inefficient use of money that heavily limits your return on investment after spending a considerable amount on hiring.
The hiring process includes the following:
- Thousands of phone calls
- Checking resumes non-stop
- Checking references for fraud
- Taking thousands of calls
- Interviewing dozens of candidates a day
- Performing background checks
- Training
- Onboarding
- Filing the necessary paperwork
And so much more.
Why pay a dedicated in-house team to handle all this when you can hire a third party to handle all these challenges? Staffing services providers are specialized in all of these tasks. They perform them for hundreds of clients a month. And best of all, they can protect you against risk by offering you a try-before-you-commit contract.
It’s every company’s worst nightmare to hire a candidate only to have them ghost you at the last second. Or it turns out they’re incompatible with your needs or company culture.
Staffing services provide you with contracts to protect against such risk.
By allowing you the ability to try out an employee before you extend them a full-time offer, you have a safe and simple exit clause in the event the candidate doesn’t work out. This extends to both temporary and permanent staffing challenges.
How Does A Staffing Agency Work?
A business looking to fill vacancies contacts a staffing agency. Staffing services are outfitted with the necessary network and tools to locate the kind of candidate that is being sought after. A staffing agency uses its network for advertising the opening through various channels. This, along with any additional requirements the employer needs.
Candidates apply for the position through social media, freelancer platforms, job search portals, listings, etc. The staffing agency conducts screening interviews to ensure the business only gets the cream of the crop. This is an intense process that consumes the lion’s share of the effort involved.
Staffing services direct the best candidates to the organization. If the company chooses to move forward with a candidate, a staffing agency completes the process and takes care of all paperwork, contracts, payroll labor, onboarding, orientation, and training. A staffing agency follows up with the business regularly to ensure the business is happy with the hired candidate.
How To Choose The Right Staffing Services?
Before you choose the first staffing agency you find at the top of your Google search engine results page, there are a few things to keep in mind.
1. Do your hiring needs match the staffing agency’s expertise?
Your industry and budget on hand dictate the kind of agency you need to hire. If you’re hiring for bulk roles in an industry with an incredibly fast churn rate, you’ll want an agency that’s specialized in handling thousands of candidates with very short turnover.
If you’re looking for an incredible niche position, you’ll want a specialist agency with a vast, credible history in the tools of the trade you’re dealing in. Since businesses have such unique, different needs, agencies end up specializing in one sort of niche or another.
2. What kind of recruitment strategy does the agency utilize?
Some agencies are old-fashioned, with manual CV screening practices and phone screen interviews. This is ideal for certain industries that focus on networking with a personalized touch. It’s not uncommon to find senior-level talent with decades worth of credentials with these methods.
Other agencies make copious use of social media to advertise positions, as well as integrate artificial intelligence into their decision-making and screening process. These agencies tend to be highly optimized and better suited for modern technology-related roles. What matters here is the kind of industry and talent being sought after.
The recruitment market was incredibly competitive in 2022. And while projections show that things might ease up in 2023, recruiting the top talent will still be challenging. Top talent won’t be available forever in the job market, so make sure to seize initiative quickly.
