How To Choose a Right Staffing Agency

Every time you hire a new recruit, your company onboards a potential employee who can take the organization to new heights. The contrary may also be true, leading to friction and unnecessary issues in the firm, making it necessary to ensure the people you hire understand and contribute to the values of your organization. However, finding the right people to join your company is quite a task for the HR department.

 

Why should a company opt for a staffing agency?

There are multiple duties that the human resource department has to manage right from payroll, attendance, issues and grievances and government policy checks to employee engagement and corporate events. Amidst all this, dedicating time to a comprehensive interview process is not easy. Shortlisting candidates to conducting several interview rounds, negotiations, follow-ups, onboarding, induction and training only adds to the list. Not to mention the scope for errors and misses that increases with too much on the plate.

Outsourcing staffing is one way to reduce the workload on the HR while ensuring that they focus on other internal operations necessary to run the company. A staffing provider helps find the right talent by matching the company’s requirements with the skills and knowledge of the candidate.

Alp Consulting is a well-known staffing agency that can provide your business with suitable candidates from our constantly updating resource pool.

Let’s have a glance at the advantages of employing a staffing agency.

Advantages of having a staffing agency

1. Simplify hiring

Today, good talent is hard to find. Moreover, the process of hiring, including reviewing profiles and conducting interviews is tedious and time-consuming. As Matthew Rowles, senior manager of talent acquisition operations at Coca-Cola highlights – “Turning to a trusted staffing partner can save time and money. A staffing firm can prescreen and qualify candidates to ensure the manager is always interviewing candidates that are a fit for the role.”

2. Minimal employee workload

When a staffing agency works on the hiring process for you, your staff and employees get time to focus on business-critical tasks. Team managers and HR can make room for other day-to-day responsibilities.

3. Specialized recruiting
Staffing agencies have the right connections and resource pools to find candidates with the required qualifications and experience to match your business needs. They also have a good knowledge of the salary ranges for specific roles and can filter out the right people with specific skills for your company.

4. Flexibility of employee journey

Your staffing agency also helps you with hiring candidates on a part-time, freelance or full-time basis. This type of flexibility allows businesses with short project durations to hire and manage resources as and when there is a requirement.


5. Decreased risk

The staffing agency takes full responsibility for the employer, including legalities, covering taxes, health insurance coverage etc., keeping the business out of any financial risk if the candidate is asked to resign due to untoward issues.

How to choose a staffing agency

Choosing a staffing agency for your company is crucial. As they will be getting new talents and future employees for your company, you should look for one with a good year of experience. Ensure that you do not waste time and money in getting the wrong agency onboard.

1. Be clear on your staffing needs

Be clear on what are the requirements that a staffing agency will fulfill for your business. Take a decision on whether you need the company for short-term or on a contract basis. A contract-to-hire agency allows you to end the contract at any time if things are going south. Hiring an agency full-time can include a lump sum amount, which is fixed. So, take the next step as per your requirements.


2. Research your potential staffing agency

There are multiple staffing agencies in the market. However, when choosing a staffing agency you want to go for the one that has a deep knowledge of your industry and understands multiple roles and requirements in the company. The staffing agency will have to find the best candidates, let’s say in tech, engineering or IT background so they need to have a wide portfolio or candidates or a huge database of a well-complied resource pool.


3. Balance the cost and requirements

Choosing a staffing agency needs to be done with a lot of consideration. The size of the agency will impact the cost. The larger the agency, the more it will charge for services. The type of agency will also impact the cost. If the agency only provides temporary employees, it will likely charge less than an agency that provides both temporary and permanent employees.

Staffing agencies usually charge based on the hired employee’s wages. It could be between 25% to even 100%. If it is 50% and the recruit earns INR 40,000 per month, you will have to pay INR 20000 per month for their work.

4. Understand the agency’s hiring process

It’s important to understand how the agency work and get complete transparency on how they source, screen and present candidates before choosing a staffing agency. Staffing agencies with a good experience in the field have an internal database of potential candidates so they can find and shortlist employees quickly.

Maintaining a resource pool

Agencies such as these are also proactive in making new resource pools by attending business events, creating new networks and connecting with them, participating in user groups, collecting referrals and even having information on candidates who do not actively apply for jobs.

Alp Consulting boasts of a huge database of candidates who are seeking new opportunities and offers businesses potential talent with verified qualifications and experience.

Screening the candidates

Staffing agencies must screen their candidates thoroughly, not just for skills and knowledge but also for background checks for workplace conduct, professionalism, communication skills etc. Ask the staffing agency about their screening and hiring process before getting them onboard.

Time frame to find the right people

It sure does take time to find the right match for any position in the company. Great talent is tough to find. However, that said, a staffing agency is already at an advantage there with a huge database and networks. It is important to askyour staffing agency about the time they take on average to send a candidate your way. Some profiles like a Senior Developer might take less time to fill as compared to a position for a Senior Manager.

Single point of contact

It’s always unwelcoming to have multiple people dealing with your firm which creates the scope of confusion and miscommunication. When choosing a staffing agency, ensure that your agency has a single person for end-to-end case management who will dedicatedly work towards finding the right talent for your company.

Understanding your business values

Over and above everything else, it’s important to make sure the staffing agency understands your business values and the expectations that your people will have from the new candidate. For a long-term relation with a new hire, it’s important that their qualities and conduct match with the company’s, and there are conflicts in the interests and expectations.
It is the job of the staffing company to make sure you get the right match and develop a cordial and long-lasting professional relationship with new recruits.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

How much should you rely on a staffing agency?

A staffing agency fulfills the requirement of a company looking to hire new members to its team. It can be really helpful to employ one as it takes the workload off the HR and managers and allow them to focus on other important tasks. However, one must consider a few things before completely relying on an agency for talent hunting:

– Check for their cost of services

– Understand their hiring process

– Do proper background research before choosing a staffing agency

– Check for the years of experience they have in the industry

– Know the average time when you can receive candidate profiles shortlisted for you

– make sure they understand your business values and so do the new recruits

How does the staffing agency source its talents?

Agencies usually source it from their huge database where they have several candidate portfolios from different roles. They also maintain a huge network in various user groups, attend business events and keep a track of people who are not actively searching for jobs.

How does the staffing agency screen candidates?
The staffing agency posts about an open position online. Once the candidates apply for it, the staffing agency screens them for the required experience level and qualifications. Next, they schedule and conduct interviews to filter the best and most qualified candidates from the lot. The shortlisted profiles are sent to the employer who has the final say in the hiring process.

What are the advantages of using a staffing agency?
There are multiple advantages to onboarding a staffing agency and allowing it to hire employers for your firm.

1. Agencies can help reduce overhead costs by allowing you to hire on a temporary or short-term basis to cut the costs of having permanent staff.

2. You get to save time on hiring and training staff so your resources can work on critical tasks at hand.

3. Staffing agencies also manage payroll and legal responsibilities, which again reduces the workload on current employees.

4. Parting ways is easier if the employer is not happy with the new recruit and their expectations do not match.

5. Some staffing agencies can offer to provide new candidates in just 24 hours, thanks to their huge database of candidates, which makes the hiring process quicker than expected.

Alp offers professional staffing solutions, so you need not worry about hiring new talent.

• Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)
• Permanent Staffing
• Employee Leasing
• Temporary Staffing
• Executive Research
• Master Vendor Services
• Out Placement Services.

We help you pick the right candidates that best match your business requirements. Alp Consulting is trusted by many. Outsourcing with Alp Consulting can help you save time and money and ensure that your team grows and progress with talented and skilled resources joining the company.