What Do Staffing Agencies Do?
A company will hire a staffing agency when they need assistance sourcing and screening candidates for their vacant positions. One of the major benefits of working with a staffing agency is that their expert recruiters will handle most tasks in the recruitment process on your behalf. This can include researching to learn about your open roles, identifying qualified candidates, checking their references, qualifying their skills and abilities, and ultimately presenting short-listed candidates to you — who you will then meet with to conduct further interviews. Your recruitment agency partner can then provide support and insights to help guide you through selecting a final candidate.
Once you have made a decision, extended an offer, and the candidate has accepted, they will start working for your company — typically on-site. A candidate placed in a contract-to-hire or temporary position will remain on the recruitment agency’s payroll. At the same time, a direct-hire employee would go directly onto your payroll.
What Services Do Staffing Agencies Provide?
There are three common ways for companies to hire for a new position or fill a vacant one when working with a staffing agency:
- Direct hire, also known as direct placement,
- Contract-to-hire, or
- Contract or temporary hire.
Each staffing service has its own advantages, and figuring out which is the best one for your business will depend on your unique needs at the time. One benefit of working with a staffing agency is that they have the experience and knowledge necessary to help you uncover which option will be the best for your particular situation.
Related: The Differences Between Contract Hire and Direct Hire
Why Companies Use Staffing Agencies
Deciding whether leveraging professional recruiting services is right for your business will be based on various factors, such as your preferences, urgency, budget, hiring needs, and in-house capabilities (to name a few).
After weighing the pros and cons of recruiting agencies, many companies identify that outsourcing staffing services is the most strategic and cost-effective move. This could be for various reasons, such as not having the resources for in-house recruiting or simply feeling that the advantages of using a recruiting firm outweigh the benefits of doing it independently.
Let’s explore a few more benefits of staffing agencies to help you decide if this is the right hiring path for your business and its needs.
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Benefits of Working With a Staffing Agency to Hire Top Talent
Recruiting experience and expertise
Headhunters in a professional staffing agency will likely have experience working with clients of various sizes operating in various industries. After interacting with a large volume and wide variety of clients and candidates, they’ve gained insights to help you identify and achieve your strategic workforce goals.
Cost savings
Recruiting is one of the most costly expenses of running a business. A staffing agency has streamlined processes that can help you hire faster, reducing your time to fill and thereby decreasing your vacancy costs. Additionally, professional headhunters have extensive talent pools they’ve spent years building, so you won’t need to allocate as much of your budget to spread the word about your openings via channels like paid advertising.
Ability to scale your workforce
Working with a staffing agency can help you grow your workforce quickly when needed. This can be useful in instances like:
- Rapid growth where you suddenly need more staff to keep up
- Business development that brings in a large new client or project
- Company expansions that involve adding additional departments or locations
- Seasonality, where you need to meet sudden but significant changes in demand
Guidance in forming your hiring strategy
Should you be looking for a contract-to-hire or direct-hire candidate? How many employees should you be adding to your team in the next year to meet your workforce growth goals? What kinds of skills and personality traits should you be looking for in a particular role? If you’re not confident in your answers to these questions, a staffing agency can be a valuable tool for forming your future hiring strategy.
Wider pool of qualified candidates
One of the most significant benefits of staffing agencies is their access to an enormous and ever-growing pool of candidates. A high-quality staffing agency attracts top-tier talent, with recruiters constantly working to expand their professional networks. At 4 Corner Resources (4CR), we often source and screen hundreds of candidates’ resumes for a single job opening to find the ideal fit. In contrast, a job posted by an in-house recruiting team may not get nearly the same volume of applications.
Confidentiality for sensitive roles
Sometimes, it’s not in your best interest to advertise a job opening far and wide. Widespread knowledge of an upcoming vacancy in the C-suite, for example, could be detrimental to the company. When hiring for sensitive positions, a staffing agency can offer discretion and ensure confidentiality for your search.
Freed up time
When you spend countless hours on tasks such as posting job openings, sourcing candidates, and screening resumes, your time and energy are taken away from other day-to-day responsibilities. One advantage of employment agencies is that they handle most front-end recruiting processes, allowing in-house employees to focus on higher-return ventures for your business.
Expedited hiring process and faster candidate placement
A successful recruiting agency can help you get talent up and running more quickly through an expedited and streamlined hiring process. At 4CR, our goal is to have a fully screened and qualified candidate for non-leadership roles within just 48 hours. With this optimized hiring process that places candidates faster, your new hire can be onboarded on a shorter timeline — meaning they can start producing value for your business sooner!
Reduced risk of new hire turnover
New hire turnover is costly. There are many hidden costs of a vacant position, especially the time and resources it takes to hire and train a new employee — and if they don’t work out, you have to do it all over again with their replacement. When a staffing agency with a successful track record steps in to help you place the best candidates in the right roles the first time around, it increases retention rates and decreases turnover costs.
Outsourced administrative tasks
Deciding who to hire is the most important part of staffing, and it’s arguably something you could do on your own… if it were the only part. Unfortunately, the reality is that recruiting comes with many tedious administrative tasks that make hiring at scale unrealistic. A staffing agency can offload time-consuming tasks like screening applicants, scheduling interviews, checking references, and conducting background checks so you can dedicate more time to speaking with finalists and running your business.
Experience the Benefits of Working With a Staffing Agency That’s Aligned With Your Needs
We’ve outlined just a few of the significant benefits of working with a staffing agency — but you won’t see success utilizing a third-party recruitment firm if you aren’t working with the one that is the right fit for your business. That’s where 4CR comes in. We’re continually ranked among the top staffing agencies in Orlando, but we’re also nationally renowned with clients and candidates across the United States.
We hope outlining some of the significant advantages of employment agencies helped you identify what your hiring needs are and if a staffing agency can help you accomplish them.
To learn more about the benefits of working with a staffing agency and what a relationship with 4CR would look like for your business, contact our team of experts today!
