According to a major survey conducted for the American Staffing Association, “companies use recruiting and staffing firms for two principal reasons: flexibility and access to talent.” The
Association revealed that “staffing companies nationwide collectively employ an
average of 2.9 million workers daily across
all industries, providing work force flexibility and access to talent … at competitive
wages, benefits and training for millions of
temporary, contract and permanent employees each year.”
Talent management, leadership development and skill acquisition means companies need to have the right people doing
the right jobs. Smart Business talked with
Danell Winsor of Delta Dallas to gain some
insight into the due diligence criteria
employers can apply when choosing the
staffing/recruiting firms that best suit their
unique requirements.
What criteria should employers consider
when choosing the staffing/recruiting firm
that can best suit their unique needs?
One criterion is to choose a firm that specializes in the employer’s industry or which
has on staff subject matter experts on the
type of positions to be filled. A key issue is
what the firm’s services will cost the
employer. Inquire about the cost of its services, fill ratios, turnover of its internal staff,
benefits to temporary employees and
what, if anything, it outsources to third parties. Find out how the recruiter is paid via
retainer, contingent fee or team bonuses.
What are some of the questions employers
should ask in the due diligence process?
The list includes questions like what the
firm’s consultants know about the employer’s business, how many years it has been
in business, if it has in-depth knowledge
about the geographical area, industry and
the people who succeed in it, whether it is
a member of national, state and local professional associations, if it adheres to a
standardized code of ethics, and if it is up
to date on human resource and employment trends and changes. The answers to
some of these questions may be available
on the search firm’s Web site.
What else can employers do?
Employers should ask for referrals and
references of clients the staffing/recruiting
firm has worked with and visit the firm’s
offices to see its operation, experience its
corporate culture, and meet the management, recruiting and service team members who will be assigned to their
accounts. They should learn about the
search firm’s processes, see what happens
when they make requests about their operations, and ask whether the firm reflects
employers’ hiring needs in the most accurate and professional manner.
Employers should learn how the
search/recruiting firm recruits and retains
its work force and how it screens, evaluates and tests its applicant pools. This
knowledge will help employers determine
the quality of the candidates who will be
assigned to their positions, and serve as a
benchmark for evaluation of the candidates’ on-the-job performances. Moreover,
employers can use the testing as a framework for technical interviews they may
conduct later.
Another step is to inquire about the availability of background, criminal, credit and
drug tests, and other verifications the
staffing and recruiting firm may offer.
There are other criteria that employers
might not think about, but which are crucial. For example, they should determine
precisely how the staffing and recruiting
firm identifies candidates for those hard-to-find positions, and ensure that it has
extensive and current databases of active
and passive candidates.
Two more critical pieces of information
include the typical turnaround time
between the time an employer makes a
request and when it is filled, and how the
employer can contact the staffing firm
after normal business hours in case of an
emergency.
Should employers and search/recruiting personnel work together on any phase of the due
diligence process before deciding if they are
suitably matched?
Absolutely. The employer will have to
spend some time to educate the
search/recruiting firm’s consultants to
review the specifics of job descriptions,
salary expectations, corporate cultures
and any other topics related to the search,
and to make interview times available for
its hiring authorities. It is important that
employers provide the staff/recruiting
firm’s consultants with candid and timely
feedback after their interviews and confirm with them all items of offers made,
including salary range and benefits.
The investment of their time and attention will pay off for the employers through
the quality of temporary employees and
candidates they receive and the accurate
matches to their unique needs. Companies
can mitigate their risks associated with
making hasty and costly hiring mistakes
and save thousands of dollars by adding to
their core headcounts as the need arises.
DANELL WINSOR, CPC, CTS, is executive vice president with
Delta Dallas. Reach her at (972) 788-2300 or [email protected].
