By KATIE BLAYLOCK & PATRICK DUDLEY
Medical professionals are looking to staffing agencies to help staff their offices and hospitals with high quality temporary employees more and more. Utilization of staffing agencies used to be an option of last resort, but now staffing agencies provide a strategic advantage and financial benefits. While there are many advantages of working with a staffing agency, how do you find the right one? You start by clearly outlining your specific needs and then identifying the staffing agency that can work with you as a partner to meet your objectives.
By working with a staffing agency, the hiring manager can ensure temp employees possess the necessary skills, education, and experience to meet their needs. Here are a few reasons a staffing agency can help.
Lower costs
By employing temporary staff through staffing agencies, the employer eliminates many tasks and cost associates with generating payroll. There are no employee tax or benefit costs. No liability insurance covering employee actions. No paid time off for holidays or vacation. No payroll withholdings or deductions to pay or report.
Staffing flexibility
There are three major types of jobs that staffing agencies help companies fill:
· temporary - the employer can work with a candidate for a set time
· temp to hire - the employer can work with a candidate for a time to ensure they are a fit before offering a permanent position
· direct hire - the employer uses the staffing agency as a recruiter for a permanent position within the company
By working with the agency, you can determine the job and the best way to fill that position which offers you staffing flexibility.
Your time
Wouldn't it be nice to actually work on things that will benefit your company rather than always dealing with turnover? With the improving job market, the hiring process is longer and more difficult for many companies. The staffing agency can assist in the process. An experienced staffing agency has access to a greater talent pool including both active and passive candidates. Convincing a person who is not considering an opportunity takes more time than recruiting someone who is anxious to leave. Most corporate recruiters spend their time with active candidates because they know the position needs to be filled. They simply don't have the time to invest in passive candidates.
They understand real job needs, so they hire people who can hit the ground running
Part of being a strong industry specific staffing agency is understanding the real job needs, as well as the hiring manager needs. While corporate recruiters could certainly do this, they rarely get the chance. As a result, too many corporate recruiters over-rely on skills, experience and compensation to filter candidates, eliminating high potential and diverse candidates from consideration.
Need to keep permanent headcount down
During hiring freezes, managers are not allowed to hire permanent employees. At this time, temporary employees become a valuable resource. They can become permanent employees when the hiring freeze is over.
Medical office managers know there are many advantages to using temporary staff, but how do you take the risk out of outsourcing those positions? Many managers are shifting their perspective from simply locating staffing agencies to developing relationships with strategic partners.
The difference is more than semantics. The thought of using temp labor for critical services may be unnerving because you feel you could lose control and connectivity. By working with a strategic partner, those services should have a different feel and result. Although a contract is involved, a strategic partnership is relationship based.
Working with an agency as a strategic partner, the focus is placements not activity
Some external recruiters might submit as many candidates as they can and hope one sticks. By working with an agency as a strategic partner, you work together to identify the job and candidate needed to fill that position. The best agency will present fewer high-quality candidates and will help manage the process from beginning to end.
Good strategic partners are more consultative than transactional which means their candidates take the job for the right reasons
These external recruiters build relationships with candidates. By understanding the needs of both the hiring company and candidate, the recruiter can find the right fit for your company. Understanding it takes more time to build these relationships, the recruiter can hire a person who will be more successful in the long run because they understand what both parties are wanting.
Where do you start looking for a strategic partner? It begins with trust. Trust is built through proven integrity, capability, and commitment.
Integrity
Choose a partner with a long history of integrity; not just in appearance, but built into its value system and exemplified in its leadership.
Capability
Partners who consistently perform well have the experience to provide quality hires to your organization.
Commitment
Having a desire to excel and determination to overcome all odds are characteristics that all winning teams share. There are open lines of communications of what is needed and what is supplied.
Is the provider you currently use willing to learn your culture and embrace those characteristics in the candidates they present? Identify that provider, and you may have revealed your strategic partner.
Katie Blaylock, Manager of Marketing and Communications, and Patrick Dudley, Managing Director, of SourceMaster Search | Staffing | MatchabilityTM. Patrick has over 20 years experience in the staffing industry including owning his own agency since 2001. Patrick can be reached at Patrick.dudley@source-master.com. Learn more about SourceMaster Search | Staffing | MatchabilityTM on their website, www.source-master.com.
