Devoted to recruiting, finding top recruits, and hiring tips and advice

Hi Mary,

First of all, kudos to you for writing a balanced piece from both perspectives of this issue.

Second, I would like to offer some advice to companies considering recruitment agencies and how to get the most from a staffing firm.

Strategic Reasons to Leverage a Professional Resource

With 90 percent of U.S. companies employing the services of staffing firms, chances are your business is currently using contingent workers to augment some portion of your full-time workforce. However, regardless of how much or how little staffing partnership experience an employer might have, many are not taking full advantage of the value of contingent workers. Others may face internal obstacles in their efforts to promote a more strategic or robust partnership with existing staffing partners. Whatever the case, there are compelling reasons to partner with a professional recruiting and staffing firm.

Good Business Sense. Any organization that employs people can benefit financially from a staffing partnership. That’s because, generally, staffing firms can conduct hiring and recruiting processes at lower cost than the organization would incur. Staffing firms can leverage significant economies of scale in online recruiting, recruitment advertising costs, background checks, payroll expenses, and unemployment and workers’ compensation insurance—line items that represent a large fixed cost for organizations with traditional in-house recruiting and hiring operations or none at all.

In addition to being more cost-effective, the use of contingent workers can foster general corporate financial health. Companies whose workforces include a combination of flexible and core workers realize better financial and share price growth, according to a study by Lehigh University and the University of Oklahoma.

Beyond the Clerical Worker. At one time, temporary or continent work was synonymous with clerical or manufacturing skills. Today, staffing industry employees span a spectrum of occupations nearly as diverse as the workforce at large, with positions ranging from day laborer to CEO. Today, the contingent workforce increasingly offers highly skilled individuals who possess outstanding educational backgrounds and work experience.
Try Before You Buy. Temporary and contract positions provide both employers and employees a chance to test a relationship before committing to permanent employment.

In fact, according to the American Staffing Association, 80 percent of staffing firm clients indicate that staffing companies provide a reliable avenue for finding people who can become permanent employees,. Further, using a temporary employee to do a particular job allows you to judge whether you need a full-time person for the job or whether a flexible arrangement is more suitable.

Access to Additional Talent Pools. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 24 million people are expected to exit the labor pool by 2010. By 2008, it is anticipated that 10 million more jobs will be available in the U.S. than there will be workers to fill them. With the size of the labor pool dwindling, business leaders are facing an entirely new dynamic in the battle for high-quality talent. At the same time, an increasing number of workers are looking for the flexibility and work/life balance that temporary or flexible work arrangements can often provide. Staffing and recruitment firms can fulfill many employees’ needs for flexibility—while giving employers a competitive advantage in accessing the broadest labor pool available.

Proven Recruiting Expertise. The core business of a staffing firm is the recruitment of quality talent. To that end, tremendous resources, investment and expertise are dedicated to finding and attracting today’s top talent. In addition, recruitment has changed significantly in the past five to ten years—not only becoming more market-driven but also highly automated and web-based. Businesses can find themselves investing too much time, money and other resources trying to keep pace with the latest recruiting technologies and systems, whereas professional staffing firms must remain on the cutting edge, or lose their competitive edge.

Responding to Dynamic Workloads. Workload fluctuations are a reality for every business in the U.S. Whether an organization is dealing with a macro issue such as an economic downturn or spike, or a temporary situation such as a seasonal peak, special project or employee shortage, leveraging a staffing firm can offer quick relief without breaking the budget. Using full-time headcount to staff up or down at a moment’s notice can be a pricey process when labor costs, which include compensation and benefits, can comprise 50% of corporate spending or more, according to the Saratoga Institute. Forward-thinking businesses turn to contingent workers as a means of managing such fluctuations.

Finally, there’s the question of how a Human Resources team should use their time—whether that should be finding the right talent, or selecting the right talent. Generally, HR staffs are stretched thin and bogged down with repetitive transactional work and administrative responsibilities, with little opportunity to focus on strategic issues such as managing human capital to overall business goals. One of the most important results of partnering with a recruiting and staffing firm is the liberation of valuable HR personnel from those cumbersome tasks—instead placing them in the dedicated hands of experts whose core business is recruiting and staffing.

Any organization that employs people can benefit financially from a staffing partnership.