Many companies these days are turning to staffing agencies to help them locate suitable talent for employment with their company, primarily because it can be such a challenge to perform all the tasks related to finding good employees. There are a great many activities associated with recruiting and hiring employees, for instance reviewing applications, carrying out interviews, conducting background checks, negotiating salaries, and even training an individual for an entry-level position.
Carrying out all these activities takes company personnel away from their normal business functions, and causes a reduction of productivity while the employee search goes on. For this reason, partnering with a staffing agency is being seen more and more as a highly desirable way of identifying suitable candidates and eventually hiring them. Here are the things you need to know about working with a staffing agency.
Benefits of Working with a Reputable Staffing Agency
More and more employers are hiring employees based on freelance or temporary positions, as well as the part-time talent to fill in on a limited basis. A reputable staffing agency can be very helpful in this area and can shorten the time frame for finding candidates and processing them. A good staffing agency can save both time and money for a company because they pre-screen candidates and pre-qualify them so that an employer has less work to do.
Temporary staffing provided by staffing agencies has become very popular with many employers who are attempting to run leaner operations, and only fill positions when they are absolutely needed. If the employer were to be constantly seeking temporary employees, that could amount to a huge waste of time and effort on the part of at least several personnel within the company.
When it comes to temporary staffing, there is also a reduced risk for an employer, because in most cases the temporary employee remains under the employment of the staffing agency, and that significantly lowers any risk to the employer. This results in much less paperwork for the employer as well, and in situations where a temporary person doesn’t work out for a company, it’s very easy to simply dismiss that person because they were never really employed by the company.
How Proper Staffing Agencies Work
In situations where a staffing agency has no qualified candidates who would be a good fit for an open position with one of their clients, it will generally advertise for the position in places where job seekers normally look. The agency would then review these applications and conduct interviews and background checks, just like an employer would. When qualified candidates are found, they would be hired as employees by the agency itself and would receive their pay and benefits directly from the agency.
Nowadays, there are also online hiring platforms such as Freelancer.com and Upwork, which provide access to independent freelancers who are willing to provide their services on a remote basis. In this situation, the employer would directly hire the freelancer, pay them appropriately, and then issue a 1099 tax form. The employer is not obliged to provide benefits or take out payroll taxes on freelancers, so many of the details of traditional employment can be bypassed, but this can come with its own risks.
Working with a Great Staffing Agency
The first important point about working with a good staffing company is that you have to find the right one for your company. Any agency that you work with should have a solid reputation for sound business practices and should be considered a reputable agency in the industry. If an agency can’t take pride in the individuals it sends out as candidates, that’s not really the type of company you should be associated with. Before partnering with any staffing agency, you should be sure that they will be able to provide real value to you, and that you can count on them to deliver truly qualified candidates.
Next, you must be clear about what you’re looking for in partnering with any staffing agency. You need to identify the qualities you’re looking for in candidates so that the agency will be able to effectively do its job and discover these types of individuals for you. In addition to providing a listing of the required skills and basic responsibilities of the position you have open, you should provide the staffing agency with information about your company’s business policies.
Anyone you bring into your company should be aware of what your policy is on work hours, dress codes, and should have a general sense of your corporate culture. You will also need to be sure that all the legal details are taken care of, for instance, worker classifications and payroll taxes. One of the more important steps you should take is to make sure that any contract you have with a staffing agency includes provisions for indemnification so that neither you nor the staffing agency can be harmed by any unpleasant issues which might come up.
If you do find a staffing agency that fulfills all your requirements, and which you feel you can rely on to supply high-quality candidates, you should do what you can to maintain good relations with this company. It always takes a while to find a reliable and reputable staffing agency that you can be confident in, so you’re not going to want to go through this process frequently. When you have this kind of comfortable relationship with a staffing agency, you should have occasional meetings with them to discuss the kind of workers that you’re looking for, so they can continue to provide viable candidates on into the future.
Finding the right staffing agency can be a tremendous boon for your business because it can relieve you of many of the time-consuming and costly details of finding and hiring qualified candidates. So when you do come across a staffing agency that you can trust, make sure to keep in regular contact with them, and treat them with the respect they deserve.
