Ask any hiring manager and you will find that the time it takes to skillfully execute all the steps in a rigorous hiring process is an ongoing challenge. Finding a recruiting partner who can help hiring managers along the way almost always makes a difference to hiring outcomes!
Hiring managers who work for small to mid sized employers have their own set of unique challenges when it comes to hiring.
The competition for talent is still alive and well! Make no mistake – the Northwest “bigs” – Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. – are still the big guerillas when it comes to attracting talent and putting small to mid sized employers disadvantage when it’s time to hire.
And did you know that somewhere between 35-50% of all hiring decisions turn out to be hiring mistakes within the first 12 months after hire. If you work for a smaller company where the hiring process is thrown together haphazardly or has a habit of being executed inconsistently, you can quickly find yourself making poor hiring decisions. Taking a short cut in the vetting process, not taking the time to check a reference or do a skill assessment, can easily deliver some performance surprises on day one.
What we have found is that, without a centralized recruiting function or in house resource dedicated to providing recruiting support, hiring managers get worn out trying to “do it all”. Not only does that reality slow down the hiring process but creates one of the underlying causes of hiring mistakes – hiring fatigue. Hiring managers who make their staffing decisions just to get that piece of work off their plate, are not always making the best decisions.
The costs of the technologies and professional expertise it takes to execute even 2 or 3 steps in a state of the art hiring process, are typically outside the range of what most small to mid sized companies can rationalize. Even the simple task of writing an effective job posting or knowing which job boards to post it on requires the guidance of someone who knows what they are doing. When it comes to hiring, companies of all sizes need access to the right technologies and professional expertise to just get into the race for talent!
The GOOD NEWS is that the world of third party recruiting services has developed into a place where it can provide a very mature set of products and services specifically designed for small to mid sized employers. The right recruiting partner can help you tackle all these issues and more.
Who are THIRD PARTY RECRUITERS?
Third party recruiters are people or companies who focus on the profiling, sourcing and screening of candidates on behalf of a larger number of employers and job openings. Many of these third party recruiters, who are referred to as staffing companies like PACE, can find candidates for all types of positions that are found in both temporary and core roles. Most recruiting agencies can provide both the general assistance and/or very specific support to replaces the work their client would otherwise do to profile and source the right candidates, screen or preliminary evaluations of the candidates “match” to the profile, arrange interviews and otherwise expedite the process of getting the right candidate hired. For sure they do all the tedious and time consuming components of the staffing or hiring process so that, internally, a hiring manager only spends time with a short list of candidates who they have determined are able and motivated to do the job.
What will the right STAFFING PARTNER do for you?
They will help you find better candidates faster – minimizing the disruption coming from a job unfilled or a lengthy hiring process!
Staffing agencies are in the candidate marketplace full time – continuously looking for candidates, identifying their underlying talent, and forming relationships with those candidates so that they can respond quickly when you have a need. And if they don’t have the candidate you need, they know how to find them quickly.
They also know how to facilitate an organized hiring process – so that each step in the process is not cut short but is done quickly and efficiently.
When a hiring process takes weeks or months when the organization needs it to take weeks, no one is winning!
They will help you minimize the chances of hiring mistakes – making sure you don’t skip over all those time consuming components of the hiring process that, if left undone, can negatively impact your hiring outcomes!
If you’ve ever been involved in hiring, you know how much time it takes to post a job, review resumes, schedule interviews, arrange interviews, do reference checks, provide professionally based skill assessments etc. Executing all the steps of a state of the art hiring process can be exhausting and when you don’t have enough resources to take on each task in a dedicated way, people can quickly get bogged down in hiring details, keeping them from doing the things that generates revenues. Unfortunately it’s all those details that are a part of hiring right that also wears out even the most well-intentioned hiring managers, leading to gaps in the process. By delegating a lot of the detailed steps in the hiring process to a third party recruiter, a company makes sure that each step in the process has been professionally executed.
You can uncover talent not always on a resume or uncovered in an interview. You get access to a full menu of professional candidate vetting tools and techniques that can provide valuable insights into a candidate’s real talents.
When you work with the right staffing agency they’ll give you access to a wide range of candidate assessment tools and the expertise needed to evaluate candidates in more depth than you are likely able to do on your own. You won’t waste time reviewing candidates who might look good in an interview setting, but simply don’t have the skills, talent, or motivation to be the right fit for the job you need done.
You’ll also be able to identify talent that you might not find by using a traditional interview. In today’s marketplace, finding hidden talent that others can’t see, is definitely a competitive advantage.
They can help you save money by giving you a quick easy way to take a more flexible approach to getting work done – to reduce your fixed costs, hire better employees, or move more quickly when opportunities come your way.
If you’re ever been concerned that the work you know needs to be done now will either change or not be there in the next 3-4 months, your staffing agency partner might help you bring on a temporary employee rather than having you go thru the time and costs associated with hiring direct. If you’ve experienced some unwanted turnover on a team or in a particular role, the right staffing partner can help you design a temp to hire “audition period” that will align with your business needs, plus significantly reduce your issue with turnover.
They will provide key insights into the local marketplace…making sure you don’t waste time pursuing candidates with a combination of skills that don’t exist or candidates you can’t afford to hire.
They will also make sure you don’t over pay for a candidate who is asking more than the competitive marketplace is willing to pay.
The right staffing agency partner will have data on the availability of candidates in the local marketplace, plus the competition you are likely to face when recruiting that candidate. What pay and benefit offerings are you competing with. The right staffing partner will help you work around your competitors to launch the right search, for the right candidate.
They will keep your hiring process free of bias.
The right recruiting partner provides consistently executed candidate screening and vetting services to make sure you hiring process starts and ends objectively.
They will keep the right candidates engaged at every step of the process.
Because they act as a candidate’s agent they will always have the inside scoop on how candidates are responding to your job opportunity-ensuring that you only spend time with candidates genuinely interested in going to work for you. You will not waste time on the wrong candidates.
They will keep an eye on the future – helping you develop your team by being on the look out for the talent you need to hire NEXT!
Working with the right staffing agency partner, you don’t have to wait for a specific need to place an order. They will be “continuously” looking, pipe-lining their candidate data base with the type of talent you need; alerting you when a special candidate is uncovered. The right staffing partner will make sure your company stays connected to available talent BEFORE your competitors beat you to the punch.
FINAL THOUGHTS
In case you haven’t noticed I have a very biased view that it is a good thing for small to mid sized companies to find a third party staffing / recruiting company that they can partner with to augment their internal resources devoted to hiring. And the operant word is partnership – something that impacts a company’s long term staffing strategies not just something that is only about getting help to fill a particular order. A relationship that identifies and addresses the bigger picture staffing challenges together.
My bias towards partnership is informed by the multiple years PACE has spent helping employers navigate complicated business challenges and providing a wide range of staffing solutions. Without these partnerships, both our client’s and PACE’s results would have been different. What I hope you take away from reading this blog is an increased recognition of what you can expect from the right staffing partner and how we can help you grow your business and teams by hiring the high performance people you need.
