Outsourcing recruitment: Why no one’s laughing at those who choose staffing

In a tight labor market where options are often limited, where candidates with the right skill set are at a premium, where elusive intangibles are always critical, and where wrong choices can be devastating, those with hiring responsibilities are left scratching their heads: how can we simplify recruitment, avoid onboarding the wrong people, and streamline personnel administration?

Hire a staffing agency and here’s why:

Save time

You’re staring at a stack of resumés on your desk—and you hardly know where to begin. Staffing agencies will help turn a source of frustration into a source of ready candidates: pre-screened, pre-qualified, and pre-selected for the precise attributes you’re seeking. You’ll still have a choice, but it’s a choice among the optimum. Eliminate the time spent interviewing the wrong fit, eliminate the frustration of going “back to the drawing board” in the face of an unaccepted offer, minimize the impact of unfilled positions—and the time stolen from your current employees when they need to cover the gaps. Your HR department will now have the time to focus on developing your staff instead of searching under rocks for magic fixes.

Save money

Freeing HR from those mundane tasks has another benefit—you’ll be saving money, as payroll, benefits management, workers compensation challenges, and other day-to-day tasks are no longer “in-house” dollar drains. Staffing agencies are HR powerhouses, with the expertise and economies of scale to handle all those personnel challenges at a cost that will make you wish you’d abandoned “do it yourself” much sooner.

Save yourself from costly mistakes

“Do it yourself” in the hiring process has another downside—you miss a candidate’s red flags and hire the wrong person. Staffing agencies have experience in catching those negatives before they lead to trouble. A staffing agency also offers a variety of options—for example, temporary hires, temp to permanent hires, or direct hires—that enable you to craft procedures that fit your business needs, and give you the option to change staff without fear of creating animosity. When a problem employment relationship develops, it’s a simple matter to end it, and move on. A staffing agency is like a firewall, insulating a company from personnel perils.

Improve your business

Perhaps the greatest benefit of a staffing agency is its access to deep talent pools. While your HR team may be limited to those who reply your job ad, a strong staffing agency has a reputation that attracts the talent you are looking for, and the expertise to search for that “perfect” candidate. Also, the “brand” of the staffing agency may enable it to attract the top candidates that a start-up company (or a company with a damaged reputation) would fail to entice.

We’ve only scratched the surface here, but the benefits of a staffing agency are many and varied.

Stay tuned for our next blog, when we’ll explore factors to investigate and characteristics to seek when choosing a staffing agency.