Most companies when they have needs for talent, they usually engage a staffing/recruiting agency to find the top talent quickly and to help reduce the pain involved in the hiring process.
The hiring process involves multiple steps right, from posting the job, sourcing talent, interviewing and finding the right fit, references, and background checks.
Hiring Managers are usually busy with their day-to-day demanding work schedule, deliverables, managing teams, and finding time to shortlist candidates, conduct interviews, etc is a very time-consuming task. There are also some other challenges that we will get into later.
Staffing and Recruiting are used to describe the candidate hiring process. These two terms are different, and we will try to go over the differences between them thought out this post. Sometimes they are used interchangeably.
In this article, we will also talk about what a good staffing and recruiting process looks like, the challenges involved, and how to find the right agency for your company's needs.
Staffing
The term Staffing often regarding short-term roles and project-based roles. They may be for a particular event, like a convention, or maybe for a project that is meant to go for, say, six months, six weeks, or less.
Staffing is usually immediate needs, so the focus is more on active candidates who are ready to start the project with short notice usually 1-2 weeks.
A good staffing agency will build up a candidate pipeline and curate talent for various kinds of jobs. The agency maintains this pipeline with regular interactions with the candidates, and many candidates work numerous jobs they find through the staffing agency. This way, the agency maintains an active pipeline of qualified candidates for various roles. Passive candidates are often removed from the roster until they express interest in becoming active again.
Staffing also involves finding talent for a very specific need/skill set. The Hiring Manager are usually not very flexible as these needs are very project specific and they need someone quickly to get up to speed without a lot of hand holding/ramp up time.
Staffing is able to ignore certain requirements of other role-filling practices, such as arranging company benefits, taxes, and sometimes even background checks beyond the most limited form.
The agency is expected to work under budget constraints/hourly rate and find the best fit for the money.
Recruiting
Recruiting refers to the act of searching for long-term and attracting candidates. This term often regarding long-term and permanent roles. While recruiting, agencies may look at both active and passive candidates. Importance is given to soft skills for these types of roles, cultural fit, ownership, domain experience, etc.
Recruiting also tends to take a candidate-first approach. Rather than approaching a candidate with a role that is already defined and needs to be filled, recruiting approaches a candidate with a likely skill set and asks them to be part of the organization.
Hunting and gathering suitable candidates require job board posting, social recruiting, and researching.
Recruiting is the most intimate and involves the most input from the company about the specific role, ideal candidate profile, team dynamics, vision/road map, and other selling points like company culture, benefits, flexibility, etc. The candidate needs to fit in within their team and within the company as a whole, particularly within upper-level management teams. These are the people in charge of the overall direction a company takes; recruiting the wrong person can steer an entire company in the wrong direction.
In both processes finding the right agency is a key decision that helps you to find a fit quickly and that helps you in reducing the pain.
Some Pain-points in Staffing and Recruiting
- Sourcing the right talent quickly
- Reading & Shortlisting lots of resumes
- Candidates turning down offers after interview
- Ghosting
- Finding the talent within the set budget
Our process and differentiation.
WinningEdge is a specialized IT Staffing and Services organization. We do best at finding talent for niche skills and hard-to-find jobs because we understand technology very well. Most agency account managers/recruiters don't understand the technology and go by keywords, and that's where companies end up with trouble.
Our process always starts with interviewing the hiring manager, and our discussions often get into the details of the technology, company vision, road map, key projects, and business challenges the company is trying to solve. Our Account Managers speak the same language as the hiring manager and have years of technology consulting and delivery experience.
We usually present max three resumes within 1-2 weeks, and most of the time, the first or second candidate gets a job offer.
Here are some additional details on our staffing process and useful links.
