5 Ways A Staffing Agency Can Get Your Business Ahead

26 Jan 5 Ways A Staffing Agency Can Get Your Business Ahead

Is your business prepared to lead the pack in recruiting and hiring? Here are five ways a top staffing agency can get your Texas business ahead.

1. A Top Staffing Agency Can Assist With Virtual Recruiting

Love it or hate it, virtual recruiting and hiring are here to stay. Not only is virtual hiring convenient, it can also expand your talent pool beyond your local borders.  

However, it’s important to approach virtual recruiting the right way so that you are setting the right tone and expectations for the hiring process. The way you present yourself and the company virtually will determine how a candidate feels about potentially working for you. To improve your virtual recruiting experience, follow these best practices:  

• Invest in solid video conference software: You want crisp, clear sound and picture, and the platform should be simple to use for both you and your candidates.  
• Communicate: Send candidates a meeting link several days prior to the interview so that they have time to test that link. In that email, confirm the start time and let them know whether you expect them to share their screen or prepare anything for presentation. 

• Start on time: Don’t make the candidate wait in a virtual waiting room. If you make them sit too long, they may sign off thinking you forgot or that they have the wrong link. If you get tied up, email the candidate immediately or have an assistant or colleague sign on to let them know what’s going on.   
• Break the ice: When you log in to the interview, take a moment to break the ice and ease into the conversation. This also allows you to test audio and video before you get into the meat of the conversation. 
• Be flexible: As long as you can see and hear the candidate clearly, be flexible and focus on the substance of their answers, not whether a rogue toddler or pet runs across the back of the screen.  
• Plan for technical problems: Technical issues can happen to anyone at any time, so set a plan in case of massive technical issues. Along with a meeting link, send a backup conference call dial-in line.  

It can take a long time to master the art of virtual recruiting and hiring, which is where LeadingEdge Personnel, a top staffing company in San Antonio and Austin, can help. We can handle all of the initial screening and vetting for you, so all you and your team have to focus on is the final round of interviews.

  2. Staffing Agencies Help You Improve The Candidate Experience

When you’re hiring for a role, it’s easy to forget that candidates are judging you and your company, just as you are evaluating them. When candidates have a poor experience during the hiring process, they aren’t likely to accept an offer when you extend one. Furthermore, they may also rate your hiring process poorly online on sites like Glassdoor. Over time, if you have enough bad reviews, it will discourage talented candidates from applying for your jobs. That’s why it’s so important to focus on creating a positive candidate experience because it can actually be a recruiting tool.  

How can you create a positive candidate experience?  

• Make the application simple: The candidate experience actually begins with your application process. Every question over 10 decreases the chances an applicant will finish the form. So, sit down and go through the application process yourself. How long does it take? Do you ask for personal information? Can you save the application and come back later?  

• Streamline the screening process: Be respectful of a candidate’s time. When scheduling a phone screen, let them know how long it will take so they can choose a convenient time. During the screening, stick to the predetermined meeting length to show that your company is efficient. 
• Be on time for interviews: You expect candidates to arrive early to an interview, but many companies have a habit of starting interviews late. Fewer things are more stressful or more frustrating to candidates than sitting around waiting for an interview to begin, and it can negatively impact the candidate experience, especially if the candidate took time off of work to interview with you. 
• Don’t let decision-makers skip interviews: Every person required to sit in on an interview should be there on time, with no exceptions. Don’t make the candidate come back because one decision-maker double-booked themselves. This type of disorganization creates a poor candidate experience, demonstrates a lack of respect for the candidate.  
• Communicate the timeline (and stick to it):  Let candidates know what the timeline is for each step of the process and stick to that timeline. If you get behind, reach out to candidates and let them know so they aren’t waiting and wondering. Lack of communication is one of the biggest complaints people have about candidate experience. 
• Don’t call confiscates at work: Always confirm a candidate’s preferred method of communication and don’t email or call them at work.  

• Reject respectfully: The way you reject a person can also impact the candidate experience and can influence their choice to review your hiring process online. Send respectful rejection letters to everyone who comes in for an in-person interview and send them as quickly as possible. 

Sounds simple enough but building a better candidate experience can take a great deal of time. However, by partnering with a staffing and recruiting company in San Antonio and Austin, you can tap into proven processes while you improve your candidate experience immediately. 

3. Flexibility

An optimized staffing plan is the key to agility, and that means that your staffing process must be flexible. That is, you must have the ability to staff up or down quickly in response to changing conditions. Flexibility can be impossible to achieve if you are only working with full-time staff. However, a strategic staffing partner like LeadingEdge Personnel can enable you to achieve staffing flexibility by helping you strategize future needs and providing skilled workers on a temporary or temporary-to-hire basis.  

Strategic and optimized staffing solutions allow you to:  

• Ramp up quickly if demand unexpectedly increases. 
• Meet seasonal or cyclical changes in demand.  
• Staff down when demand slows without negatively impacting morale.  
• Scale and grow the business effectively. 
• Test new markets. 
• Access skilled employees quickly to fill immediate gaps or unexpected absences. 

A strong staffing agency can help you focus on your day-to-day operations without having to worry about staffing. You can stay fully-staffed and keep productivity high while also controlling labor costs since you aren’t hiring full-time staff.  

4. Prioritizing Diversity

Diversity and inclusion are a priority for HR teams as their company leaders, employees, and even the general public push for a workforce that is reflective of demographic trends. However, diversity is about a lot more than PR – it’s also about cultivating a more effective business.  

Diverse organizations generate higher morale amongst employees, attract a more diverse and talented pool of candidates, and perform better overall. Diversity and inclusion can improve business outcomes in many ways:  

• Businesses with a diverse workforce are 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above industry medians.  
• Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.  
• For every 10 percent increase in racial and ethnic diversity on the senior-executive team, earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) rise 0.8 percent. 
• Ethnically diverse leadership teams are 36 percent more likely to be profitable. 
• Companies with diverse management teams report innovation revenue 19 percentage points higher than their less diverse counterparts. 
• Companies in the top quartile for both gender and ethnic diversity are 12 percent more likely to outperform all other companies. 

Your company’s diversity and inclusion record can also impact your ability to recruit top talent. As younger generations enter the workforce, the demand for diversity and inclusion grows exponentially. Generation Z has made it quite clear that they want to work for companies that reflect the demographics of the world around them. Sixty-seven percent of Gen Z job seekers said a diverse workforce is important when considering job offers.   

However, if diversity were easy to achieve, no one would be talking about it. The reality is that achieving true diversity and inclusion that is reflective of the culture can feel like an uphill battle. It can be difficult to attract a diverse pipeline of candidates to your jobs, it can be challenging to recruit diverse employees if your current workforce is homogeneous, and once you achieve diversity hiring, you have to work on retaining your workforce.  

A strategic staffing partner can help you move towards diversity and inclusion at your organization. Staffing experts can help you develop a diverse hiring strategy and incorporate that strategy into your daily operations. 

5. Strong Candidate Pool 

Your candidate pool is the database of profiles of people who are interested in working for your business. So often, companies tell candidates that they will keep their resumes on file but do nothing with the candidate’s profile after that. Neglecting your candidate pool can be to your detriment. Just because someone is not a match for the role you’re hiring for today, doesn’t mean they aren’t a good fit for your company in another role or department in the future.  

Investing in a candidate pool can improve long-term recruitment and hiring in many ways:  

• Reduces recruiting costs: Before shelling out hundreds of dollars to advertise an opening, you can start your search from your candidate pool. A well-cultivated database may yield results immediately. 
• Saves time during the hiring process: When you are cultivating a talent pool, you are always in a state of proactive recruitment, rather than waiting for your ideal candidate to knock on your door when you advertise a job. A strong candidate pool can help you select the best candidates faster.  
• Candidate pools help you grow for the future: Having a wide talent pool allows you to identify potential candidates before there is even an opening in your company. When someone applies but isn’t a great fit for one role, they can be flagged according to the future needs of the company.  
• Talent engagement: Use your candidate pool as a mailing list. Monthly, send out new openings and let potential candidates know about company news. This will help them stay connected to you and will keep them engaged in case they are a fit for a future role. 

A robust candidate pool can vastly improve long-term recruiting and hiring processes, but it can take years to develop a database and to implement strategies that allow you to leverage that pool to your advantage. By partnering with a strategic staffing company in San Antonio and Austin, you instantly tap into their robust candidate pool. They’ve spent years cultivating a database of skilled, talented candidates who are interested in making a move when the right opportunity comes along. You get all of the advantages of a deep candidate pool without waiting to develop one yourself. 

Get Ahead with LeadingEdge Personnel

If you are ready to get your business ahead by gaining a competitive edge through staffing and talent management, LeadingEdge Personnel is ready to help. Contact us today to learn more about the ways we can help you achieve your strategic goals through staffing.