Success in any business involves several aspects that should be addressed efficiently. The most important of such aspects is having a talented workforce that can overcome any challenge. Now, you can get and maintain one by working with staffing firms, but, what do you need to know about them?
In this article, you will find out what staffing firms are and what can they do for your company. You will also discover here how they recruit candidates. Here we will give you answers to your questions. To allow you this, we will talk about the following interesting topics:
- What is a staffing firm?
- What can staffing firms do for my company?
- Which are the recruitment methods used by staffing firms?
- How much does it cost to work with a staffing firm?
- Where can I find more information about staffing firms?
1. What is a staffing firm?
Your company probably started with an HR department that handled recruitment tasks as a part of their job. However, with your business growing more every day, you started noticing such a department was slammed with work. Later, with quick questions, you realized why: activities such as searching, selecting, screening, interviewing, and hiring candidates are time-consuming processes.
Furthermore, they try to no select the wrong candidates, but, with limited experience in the staffing field, it is a difficult goal to achieve. Finally, in their desperation, they ask you for help. Luckily, you have the answer to their prayers: a staffing firm.
Staffing firms are companies specialized in everything that involves recruitment. Their expertise goes from knowing how to search for candidates to know how to make job offers attractive, and beyond. Therefore, with a staffing firm, your HR department will no longer have to worry about finding the right candidates.
The staffing firm will handle all of this workload properly, ensuring to provide you with skilled and motivated employees. As a result of such advantages of using them, staffing companies will stick around for a long time. Hence, you must know everything you can about what their future will look like.
2. What can staffing firms do for my company?
It is not a coincidence that the most successful companies around the world use staffing firms for recruitment purposes. Most importantly, they find attractive how staffing firms get them a highly skilled workforce that represents competitive leverage.
Now, let us get back to your story. You just signed a contract with the best staffing firm you found, and your HR department now feels tremendously relieved. But, some employees of your company are now stopping you in the office and asking you: what can they do for us? You may have not the answer to such a question firsthand. Nevertheless, we are here to help you figure it out. In essence, staffing firms can do several things for companies, depending on their type of business and their location.
However, in a general sense, they can help your company in three primary ways that we will deepen ahead. These are ways applicable in most businesses and come as a result of multiple experiences of working with staffing firms. Furthermore, you can get more of your staffing firm by choosing the right staffing solution for your company.
Let us now dig deeper into what staffing firms can do for your company:
2.1 Faster hiring
In today’s business world, great talent has become hard to find. Furthermore, it can be even harder if you try to search for it without the proper knowledge of the field. We do not doubt you could find such talent out there. But, it will take you a lot of time if you do not know how to search for it. Here, staffing firms can be extremely helpful by knowing how and where to search for skilled candidates.
Moreover, they have the expertise to screen and interview such candidates very quickly. As a result, your company will enjoy faster hiring processes. For example, you can recruit and hire technical staff for your business in the UAE in no time.
Most staffing firms also search for ways of making these processes faster every day. For instance, they keep a database of all selected candidates with their professional information. It allows them to save time by prioritizing their database over candidates from other platforms that do not have a performed scrutiny. Another method you can apply to perform such processes faster is using HR systems. After all, you can enjoy substantial benefits by integrating these systems with your hiring tasks.
2.2 Flexibility
The majority of companies worldwide have found many advantages of working with contract workers. In essence, temporary employment allows them to have a skilled workforce only when they need it. This way, they can save money they would spend on onboarding and training processes.
However, temporary employment also involves a higher workers rotation, which increases the hiring workload. In this matter, staffing firms offer companies an advantage they cannot find any other way: flexibility. With a staffing firm, you can have a more fluid workforce that can be dynamically adjusted to your needs. Their connections network allows them to find you skilled candidates for temporary roles quickly.
Most importantly, flexibility is extremely important if your company has several short-term projects to handle. Hence, you should look for staffing firms specializing in temporary employment if this is your case. In other words, you should seek the services of temporary staffing agencies. A staffing firm of such a kind comes with its own characteristics. Thus, you must be aware of the main aspects of a temporary staffing agency before working with one.
2.3 Lower risks
In sports, every scoring attempt comes with the possibility of being a failed one. Therefore, you need to evaluate the risks while performing the attempt to determine if it should be done. Staffing can be explained through this analogy. Certainly, there are benefits to choosing the right employees for the available jobs. But, there are also several risks related to choosing the wrong ones.
As an employer, you need to comply with legal responsibilities, such as insurance coverage and following labor laws. Thus, picking the wrong candidates can get you legal and financial problems, especially if they have to be fired quickly.
Working with a staffing firm allows you to lower the risks involved in recruitment. Here, the staffing firm you work with will most probably find you the right skilled and talented candidates. Furthermore, they will assume all of these liabilities in the case they fail to comply with it. Such an advantage is one of the main reasons most companies use staffing firms for permanent employees. However, you must know all of these reasons to understand why they use staffing services for full-time positions.
3. Which are the recruitment methods used by staffing firms?
After reading the previous topic, you came back to your office and answered the question about what staffing firms can do. However, some of your employees are more curious, and ask you another question: how do they do it? The answer to such a question was simpler. In essence, you just posted a job opportunity on an employment website and waited for candidates to apply. You then selected the most qualified ones, you interviewed them, and finally, you picked the winner.
Now, in the staffing business, such an answer is more complex. The best staffing firms realized that the best move is not to wait. Instead, they now do active candidates searches to locate the best suitable ones for the available positions. Performing an active candidate’s search involves using one or more of the available recruitment methods.
They allow staffing firms to find skilled professionals to hire, or for keeping them on their radar for future openings. On the other hand, many of these methods involve using staffing and recruitment software. Due to its popularity, they now have a big market that is growing substantially.
Let us now show you in detail four recruitment methods used by staffing firms:
3.1. Candidate pool or database
Staffing firms can save time and resources by reviewing their candidate pool first when an available position appears. By doing so, they can find the right candidates faster, ensuring to deliver adequate workers for the roles.
This method is the most important for temporary staffing agencies, where their candidate pool is their primary source of potential employees. On the other hand, you may think staffing firms can have some problems handling big candidate pools. Nevertheless, it is a better idea to expand it.
3.2. LinkedIn
LinkedIn allows recruiters to search for candidates based on their work history, college, or job title easily. Furthermore, the platform is a tool where candidates can post their professional accomplishments and stay in touch with their professional colleagues.
Proactive candidates on the site are more noticeable to staffing firms that can contact them about job opportunities. Therefore, they should add their volunteer work, attach work samples, and network with professionals in their field. By doing so, they will let staffing firms know they are open to job opportunities. On the other hand, LinkedIn also allows companies to search for consultants in several businesses. Now, some people think that staffing and consulting services look alike, but, they have some differences.
3.3. Professional referrals
Staffing firms find attractive the idea of working with candidates referred by employees at their company. They also like to work with candidates that they previously placed in other companies for the same reason. Above all, referrals tend to be strong candidates, because they have proven their reliability to employees willing to recommend them. Your company can even encourage this by giving a monetary incentive to employees who recommend candidates.
To sum up, the staffing firm you are working with can save the time it would invest in candidates’ searches by working with referrals. Here, it is who you know that matters the most. Hence, candidates should tell their friends and family when they are searching for new jobs.
Professional referrals are standard practice in some industries around the world. In the private household staff business, where recommendations are essential, referred candidates are the most regularly hired. Besides this, private household staffing is a business that suffered severe changes during the covid-19 pandemic.
4. How much does it charge a staffing firm for its services?
Rather than receiving a monthly compensation, staffing firms charge their services only when they successfully place candidates in your company. Furthermore, such services cost varies depending on the agency. But, the most common practice is charging a percentage of the candidate’s compensation.
In today’s staffing business, staffing firms charge 20% of their candidate’s compensation. For instance, if a candidate is hired with monthly compensation of $100, your company will need to pay its staffing firm AED 20 every month. It may seem like a lot of money, but we can guarantee you that, the costs of choosing the wrong candidates are significantly larger.
5. Where can I find more information about staffing firms?
As it is in life, knowledge is power in every business. Staffing is not exempt from this. Hence, by knowing how the best staffing firms can help you, you will have an advantage over your competitors. Therefore, you must discover everything you need to know about staffing firms.
Besides such knowledge, choosing the right staffing firm for your business is an essential task. On Connect Staff, we believe in doing meaningful work for you, by providing the staffing services you require for your company.
Do you have some questions about staffing services? Take a moment to contact us and obtain more information about how we can help you, by calling us at +971 43 316 688. You can also email us at contact@connectstaff.ae, to talk with one of our representatives who will clarify all your doubts.
Take a moment to see all the available job offers we have for you on The Talent Point. Apply for one today by uploading your CV on thetalentpoint.com. Moreover, you can send your resume to contact@thetalentpoint.com.