By Michelle Matheny; Account Manager with TempExperts

In Part I of this series, we looked at understanding the role of a staffing firm.   Here is the link.

In the second part of this series, we will look at how staffing firms and Human Resources (HR) Departments can work together as productive partners and look to understand what it means to engage a staffing organization to fulfill a company’s temporary staffing objectives.

We can first start by looking at what it means for staffing firms and HR Departments to engage as effective partners.   Then we can look towards how to make use of a staffing organization to competently fulfill the company’s temporary staffing goals.

The Relationship Between Staffing Firms and HR Departments

A company’s HR Department has many responsibilities beyond recruiting.  HR Departments are accountable for an endless list of compliance and administration tasks, in addition to having obligations towards new hire orientation, benefits coordination, plus the development of various coaching & training programs.   The process of recruiting new staff on top of all of these responsibilities is time-consuming.  Not to mention that the initial screening or sourcing process can be cumbersome too, expending significant amounts of time.

A staffing firm’s role is to make the task of hiring easier.  Often a staffing firm will have already accomplished much of the tedious work of candidate matching and initiating the requisite dialogue needed to ensure candidates are reliable and open to communication with the client company.

How Staffing Firms Help

One of the most frustrating and pervasive “hiccups” in the recruiting process is when companies are in communication with a candidate and the candidate disappears into thin air.  With the abundance of opportunities available to them, job seekers can be unreliable.  This happens for a variety of reasons: sometimes candidates get a better job offer and just stop responding in order to avoid uneasy conversation; Other times, they may simply decide they aren’t interested and “ghost” their recruiter.  Staffing firms eliminate this frustrating and mundane process, allowing the HR department the time they need to spend on tasks that only they can perform to advance the fulfillment of other HR objectives.

Once hired, another common problem many companies face is how to handle difficult or uncomfortable conversations with a new employee.  The early days of employment are a crucial time to set expectations, give constructive feedback, and get ahead of foreseeable issues.  These conversations can sometimes be uncomfortable or damaging to the long-term relationship between the new employee and their team, especially if the initial coaching offered is perceived to be heavy-handed.  To mitigate this unwelcome dilemma, staffing firms are available to play the “go-between” when potentially awkward conversations need to happen, such as an employee being on their phone too often after lunch or a new hire needing to step up performance after the training process is completed.

Going Down the Path of Temporary Staffing – A Primer

Teaming with a staffing firm can be an absolute game-changer for a company looking to hire temporary workers.  Staffing firms are experts in recruiting and finding the proverbial “cream that rises to the top” of the candidate pool.  By design, staffing firms have an ample  pool of well-qualified candidates they are in constant contact with; across numerous industries.  This puts the right staffing firm in an excellent position to engage with the widest possible range of qualified job seekers, not just the ones who might click on a company’s job posting on Indeed and submit an application.

At times, there may be some bumps along the path of temporary staffing. Some candidates are willing to take temporary work but may not have had a lot of stability in past jobs, which may be difficult to overcome.   Other candidates may decide to leave abruptly during a temp period.  There is a mutual understanding nowadays that the job is not forever and sometimes there are instances where an employee simply decides to call and say, “That’s my last hour of work and I’m not returning.”

Staffing firms help allay these difficulties through relationship-building and having strong communication with both sides.  The best staffing firms focus heavily on being a compelling partner to not only their clients — but also to their candidates.  These staffing firms understand that it is important to have transparency in the process.   An effective staffing firm is adept at allowing candidates the right amount of “peek” behind the curtain.   Candidates who work temporary positions like to know that they are needed and relied upon.  Even though a position is not “forever”, they yearn to know that they are depended upon and respected;  just like everyone else in the building.  A staffing firm’s relationship with the candidate can also play a key-role. While they may not work on that assignment for a long time, they can continue a fruitful and beneficial with the staffing firm if they stay true to their word. This amplifies the staffing firms leverage as they say, “Stay, take care of this client, do a good job for them and then we can find somewhere great for you to go afterward.”

This is always beneficial to the client organization as doing good always comes around full circle.

A client company has a responsibility to their temporary staff.   It is critical for them to communicate their company culture and make temporary employees feel a part of their team.  The ideal is for everyone to enter into the temporary arrangement as an exercise in team success, whether a new employee is there for a week, a couple of months, or a couple of years.  When temporary employees are made to feel as if they are a part of the family, they perform accordingly.  Even if their “stay” as a member of the team is understood to be limited.

A company may decide to team up with a staffing firm for any number of reasons. Some companies may not be concerned about risk reduction, but do not want to worry about the number of applications they have coming in.   Others like the immediacy of job placement a temporary agency provides.  Yet another company may have many great candidates available to them.  But that doesn’t mean they can get them hired and on-boarded quickly.   A staffing firm can often get someone in the job faster — because they’ve been relationship-building weeks before the client company called and stated they had a need.

Assistance is provided in assessing each candidate’s ability to be precision-matched, using different resources in skill testing, reference checking, and thorough communication to know if they are going to be the right fit.  In any of these cases, engaging a quality staffing firm bears productive fruit.

Remember:  A staffing firm’s number one goal is to match the right talent to the right organization, at the right time.  Accomplishing this goal makes for a match made in staffing heaven.

At TempExperts you can give us a call at anytime to help you.   Our number is (727)-210-7855.

We hope you have enjoyed this series analyzing the role of a staffing firm through the scope of present-day hiring issues. It has been prepared by Michelle Matheny, a TempExperts Team Member since 2017.