Bringing new employees to your company involves several activities that must be performed properly and efficiently. Above all, there are big risks related to them. If you ask around, you will find out you need to source, select, recruit, and staff candidates. But, are not such processes the same thing?
In this article, you will find out why they are not. Here, you will learn what sourcing, recruitment, selection, and staffing are, and how staffing firms perform them. You will also discover which process is the most important. We will allow you to do this by talking about the following:
- What does source, select, recruit, and staff means?
- How do Staffing Firms perform each one of them?
- Which one of such processes is the most important?
- Where can I find more information about sourcing, recruitment, staffing, and selection services?
1. What does source, select, recruit, and staff means?
First and foremost, learning the differences between source, select, recruit, and staff involves knowing the definition of each one. Most importantly, they are processes you will see at any business level regularly. With most of them business owners can find the perfect individuals for contract staffing and more, thanks to their search methods.
In essence, they deal with the constant employee rotation that is happening in most companies nowadays. Such a rotation has two main reasons: the COVID-19 pandemic, and the increased demand for temporary employees. Therefore, knowing these processes will give you an edge in attracting potential candidates.
Here, you will find out that, despite being different tasks, they are also the steps of the main process. After all, the main goal here is to endow your company with new employees that increase your workforce’s capacity. Thus, you will need to perform all of them to do so.
Furthermore, thinking that several concepts are equal is a common misconception in numerous cases. For instance, some believe that the words “then” and “than” can be used in the same context, but they cannot. Such a misconception happens between staffing and consulting services. However, they have their differences.
Let us now show you in detail what source, select, recruit, and staff means:
1.1 Sourcing
After you identify a need for a new employee in your company, you first do a requisition. It will allow you to tell your HR department, or your staffing agency, that they must begin with their tasks. Certainly, the first one they do is sourcing. In essence, sourcing is a talent acquisition discipline that identifies, assesses, and engages potential candidates, turning them into applicants. Among staffing agencies, some people specialize in this discipline, and they are typically called sources.
A source usually searches for strategizing ways to elaborate a consistent supply of skilled individuals. They do such a search by using several sourcing methods available due to the current technological advances. We will dig deeper into such processes later down the road.
Sourcing was not a common practice in the past. Companies used to post job offers and wait for interested job seekers to apply. Now, staffing agencies have found it more beneficial to hunt and find passive candidates. Moreover, such technological advances have made it possible to perform sourcing remotely. However, the staffing agency performing sourcing tasks this way must be managed in this manner too. Therefore, you should know how a staffing agency can be remotely managed.
1.2 Recruitment
Once your HR department or your staffing agency finishes applying sourcing methods, they now can move on to the next process. You now have potential candidates at your disposal that are beginning to be applicants. Therefore, the following step is to recruit them.
Recruitment involves guiding applicants through the screening and interviewing processes. That is to say, you walk them through their evaluations, interviews, and offers negotiations. In some cases, recruitment also involves guiding them during their onboarding process. For example, once we find customer service executives for a company, we will guide them through this process with ease.
Similar to sources, in most staffing agencies, some people specialize in recruitment, and they are commonly known as recruiters. Hence, in a typical main process, qualified applicants are handed over by sources to recruiters at this stage. Then, recruiters take the relationship to the next level, through phone screening, setting up interviews, and negotiating salaries. In essence, they are the primary connection between potential candidates and their future employers.
Furthermore, the best staffing agencies use all of the available tools to make recruitment efficient and faster. The most universal tool used today in this matter is staffing and recruitment software. Indeed, it is a product with a big market that is going to keep growing in the following years.
1.3 Selection
You now have applicants guided by your recruiters. They already screened and interviewed them, and you negotiated with them the compensation aspects of the available role. Therefore, you have a catalog of qualified candidates for the available position. Here, the next step is Selection.
Selection involves measuring the qualified candidates using clearly defined standards or criteria that reflect your needs as their future employer. Here, such criteria can go from their education level to their working experience, including other aspects such as their skills.
Most importantly, your HR department or your staffing agency must rate their qualified candidates during selection. This way, their decision will be less biased and fairer, ensuring to pick the right candidate objectively. Most staffing agencies use technology to select IT support staff and oher types of employees in different fields.
At this stage, you must review the rating results, and select the applicant that will be your new employee. Here, there are no specialized people. It is up to your internal personnel or staffing firm to perform the selection process after the recruiter’s job ends.
However, selection can be a time-consuming process. This is truer when your company uses temporary employment and you need to select temporary employees regularly. It is one of the reasons organizations should use staffing firms to hire them.
1.4 Staffing
Finally, we arrived at the final stage of the main process. You just selected the qualified candidate that is going to fill the available role and he/she is willing to start. Now, he/she must go through the joining formalities, inductions, and orientation. In other words, you must finish staffing him/her.
Staffing is the name of the main process (you now see why we did not tell you its name before). Hence, it involves performing all of the previous processes: sourcing, recruiting, and selecting future employees. Moreover, it goes even further.
Nowadays, staffing also involves evaluating your employees and developing a working relationship with them. You may think that such evaluations should be done only on your permanent workers. However, companies around the world are now following the practice of evaluating their temporary employees’ performance too.
2. How do staffing firms source, select, recruit, and staff?
At this point, you learned the definition of every part of the staffing process and realized why they are different. You probably also found out that such tasks can be complex and take you a lot of time. Thus, we recommend that you seek the services of staffing firms if it is your case.
Staffing firms are familiar with the legal and technical aspects of these processes. They specialize in finding, recruiting, and selecting the best candidates for the jobs. Furthermore, they can manage to make this efficiently and quickly, ensuring to deliver you qualified employees in no time.
You are probably wondering how they do it. Well, staffing firms have taken advantage of the technological advances to develop methods of performing each process. To help you understand it, we will show you in detail which sourcing, recruitment, and selection method are used by them.
However, such methods are the ones used by staffing firms today. Their business is growing more every day all over the world. Hence, you must also learn about what the future holds for staffing companies.
Let us now dig deeper into the sourcing, recruitment, and selection methods used by staffing firms:
2.1 Sourcing and recruitment methods
As we stated earlier here, sourcing is a relatively new practice in the staffing business. Above all, sourcing was born because the technological advances and the interconnectivity allowed finding potential candidates faster and efficiently.
Indeed, most sourcing and recruitment methods used by staffing firms nowadays are remote. The most popular ones include Applicants Tracking Systems (ATS), networking sites like LinkedIn, social media, and professional platforms. ATS run keyword searches on resumes submitted online to their database when an open position appears. In this way, recruiters can populate and rank candidates based on finding such keywords in their resumes.
On the other hand, LinkedIn allows sources to search for candidates based on their work history, college, or job title. Such a platform offers candidates the opportunity of being more noticeable to sources who can contact them about job offers.
Finally, companies also realized that using social media to search for candidates or post job offers can be beneficial. In essence, their presence and influence on social media can improve sourcing, with billions of potential candidates at their disposal. In other words, sourcing nowadays is all about following trends. Therefore, knowing the global staffing trends in 2022 may come in handy.
2.2 Selection methods
Selection is a task where technological advances have helped to recollect the necessary data for it. Nonetheless, in the end, it has a more mathematical approach than a technological one. In essence, the best staffing firms perform selection with a scoring board.
The preferred method, more or less depending on your line of work, goes like this:
- Once your qualified candidates are recruited, you must define the weight of each criterion used for selection. For instance, you can define the educational level’s weight as 30%, the working experience’s weight as 35%, and the skills’ weight as 35%.
- Then, you must rate your qualified candidates on each criterion through a scale. For example, you can give a scale of 1 to the candidate that does not meet the criteria and of 5 to the candidate that meets the criteria completely.
- Finally, you must do a weighted sum of the ratings. Besides some exceptions, the qualified candidate that comes on top after the sum wins the position as your new employee.
Furthermore, such a selection method can be even enhanced. One awesome way of doing so is integrating hiring and HR systems in your company. It is a practice with substantial benefits.
3. Which one of such processes is the most important?
The correct answer to this question is: all of them are equally important. However, sourcing and recruitment have a little more importance over the selection, because nothing can be selected without the proper candidates.
As a result, most staffing firms worldwide focus their efforts on being better in sourcing and recruitment every day. One way they found to add speed to such processes is by building a candidate pool. Certainly, you can save time by staffing candidates you already knew, screened, and interviewed.
On the other hand, you may think staffing firms enjoy handling a limited candidate pool to lower their workload. But, recent studies have shown that the best idea they can have, is to expand it.
4. Where can I find more information about sourcing, recruitment, staffing, and selection services?
In every business, the know-how is a required tool and a competitive advantage over competitors. Now, in the staffing business, the know-how involves knowing what source, select, recruit, and staff means. Furthermore, you must also know why there are all different processes.
In conclusion, you will find substantial benefits by working with a staffing agency that dominates all of these processes. On Connect Staff, we believe in doing meaningful work for you, by providing our source, select, recruit, and staff services you require.
Do you have questions about staffing services? Then, go and contact us to obtain more information about how we can help your business, 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 answer all your questions.
Moreover, you can see all the available job offers for you on The Talent Point. Apply for one today by visiting thetalentpoint.com. Alternatively, send your CV via email and it will be reviewed shortly! contact@thetalentpoint.com.
