With a tight labor market and a shrinking pool of available talent, it has become more difficult and more expensive to find new employees. According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) it costs $4129 to hire a new employee and takes 42 days on average to make a hire. Even to hire an employee that you’re only going to pay $8 an hour still cost $3500 in turnover costs. Plus, these numbers don’t include yearly costs for training, which, according to Training Magazine, are $1886 a year. Small businesses — those who have less than 1000 employees — are paying the highest costs every year.
If you make the wrong hire, it can be costly, as well. If that wrong hire was making $60,000, it could cost your business as much as $78,000 to replace them. This includes indirect costs such as new recruiting efforts, lost opportunities, delayed projects or marketing and bad employee morale.
For these reasons, there are many benefits of working with a staffing agency. The right staffing agency can help you find the best talent available for even the most challenging job opportunities. Most of them can do this at a fraction of the cost that you would pay to do all the necessary recruiting, advertising, paperwork, interviews and salary negotiation.
Here are eight reasons to work with a staffing agency for all your new hire needs.
1. Save Time
One of the greatest advantages of working with an IT staffing agency is the amount of time you save. Instead of taking 42 days to find the right employee, it might only take a few. Your company doesn’t waste time interviewing unqualified candidates or in a search to find the right candidate — good staffing agencies do that for you instead. They perform background checks and will interview candidates before they introduce the right one to you.
Anyone who has worked in business knows about the extensive paperwork involved with the hiring process. This is especially true for IT industries. Many of the jobs needed in IT are short-term or contract based. Imagine having to go through the process again and again every time you need a particular worker for a new project. A good staffing agency deals with all the paperwork before sending you a qualified candidate. They do the grunt work, and you get a good worker.
Recruiters for staffing agencies also help save time because they stay up-to-date with the new trends and changes happening in the IT industry. It’s often difficult to find someone in your company who has specific knowledge about the skill set needed for a particular contract. If you’ve taken on a new contract and need to find someone with skills to match the current industry, recruiters will know who that person is and how they can help your company.
Imagine the time this saves you and your business. This is especially important if your contract needs to start as soon as possible. A good staffing agency will find the best person for you much faster than your company’s HR department can.
2. Choose From a Bigger Pool of Candidates
One of the ways a staffing agency helps save you time is because they have access to a much larger talent pool. Staffing agencies are constantly looking for new people, so they always have candidates ready for new jobs. This is difficult for an internal HR department because they may not know you will need a particular type of candidate at some point in the future. It might be necessary for them to start from scratch to look for the right person.
Information technology staffing companies will already have someone who can fill that position immediately, or at least in a few days. In most cases, you only have to pick up the phone and “place your order.”
A misconception about staffing agencies is that they only deal with candidates who can’t find work in other places. This is not true. Many of the contractors or freelancers who work for a staffing agency do so because they like the kind of flexibility a staffing agency offers. They enjoy working at different tasks and learning new skills that they acquire from a variety of assignments rather than performing one job all the time.
It works the other way, as well. If you’re looking to find someone to work on a temporary basis but who might want to accept a full-time position if you offer them one, a staffing agency can help you there, as well. They will have already done lots of interviews with various candidates and will know who is interested in flexible work and who is interested in a more full-time position. So, they will send you the right candidate based on the preferences you give them.
3. Save Money
Why do companies use staffing agencies? One of the very biggest reasons is the amount of money they save. There are several ways a staffing agency can save you money, including the following:
- Replace human resources: A good staffing agency can serve as your HR department if you don’t have one. It can handle functions like attracting the right applicants, terminating workers if necessary and even handling disciplinary actions. You’ll spend less money because you’ll need less space for an on-site HR department. Plus, you’ll make fewer payments for employee retirement plans, health insurance premiums and other benefits.
- Improve training efficiency: A staffing agency improves efficiency because it reduces the time your current employees will need to spend training new hires. A staffing agency will have already identified the right candidate with the IT experience you need. They will also provide the initial training a new employee needs, so they are ready to contribute to your business the moment they arrive. This allows your current employees to focus on generating more sales, creating more products and reducing errors. All these things can lead to a healthier bottom line.
- Reduce overtime: Asking current employees to work many hours of overtime not only tires out your staff, which increases the possibility of errors, but it also adds a lot of excessive costs to your budget. When you work with a staffing agency to hire qualified employees, this can help reduce those overtime payments because it reduces the number of hours your current staff must work to meet production goals. It also helps reduce the burnout factor, which means fewer errors and less stress.
- Allow for flexible staffing: If your business runs on a cyclical calendar, information technology recruitment and staffing specialists allow you to hire staff when you need them. So, if you know you have a large IT project due by a certain time, you can hire the staff to meet that goal. If your company has a slow period during the year, you can reduce your staff accordingly. Working with a staffing agency also minimizes some of the expenses mentioned above, such as lost productivity and the costs associated with doing paperwork and conducting interviews. They also help reduce costs by performing pre-employment testing, background testing and drug testing.
4. Take Advantage of an Agency’s Expertise
Staffing agencies always have a level of expertise that transcends what most human resources departments can achieve. A good human resource department will have experience in recruiting and know a lot about your workplace culture, but they will often lack the knowledge required for a specific position or a specialty task. Staffing agencies can help you find the best person with the skill set that will excel at your company.
Your human resources department is most often in touch with one particular group of people, while a staffing agency interacts regularly with people from various industries. That is why they are so often ahead of the curve when it comes to learning about technology. A staffing or recruiting agency will put in the long hours needed to find candidates.
4. Enjoy the Accountability of the Agency
Another benefit of working with staffing agencies is their accountability. All staffing agencies depend on the success of their clients, which makes you their top priority. An internal HR department often has numerous priorities, which is why it may take up to 42 days to find the right hire. If one staffing agency doesn’t get the job done, it doesn’t cost you anything to find a new one and take your business elsewhere.
5. Access Specialized Skills for Short Period of Time
A new contract or project may require skills no one on your staff has. It may not be in your best interest, however, to try and hire a full-time employee immediately. The contract may have a quick turnaround time, and you want to see if this is the kind of work your company can do. Staffing agencies know people with the specialized talents you need. They’ll send them to your company to work on the part of the project you need them for without you having to hire them. So, there’s no need to retain them after the specialized task is complete.
6. Reduce Friction Among Hiring Managers
Have you ever been in the situation where your company has interviewed several people for a position and there is a disagreement among your hiring managers or department heads about the best person for the job?
This not only creates internal tension, but it can dramatically slow down the hiring process. In a field like IT, where specific skills are often required, it may be difficult for a human resources generalist to understand the exact skills needed.
The recruiters for an IT staffing agency are an asset in these kinds of situations. The industry expertise they possess helps them understand exactly what the hiring manager needs, often without lengthy, time-consuming explanations. They can also help a group of hiring managers or of department heads reach a consensus on the skill-set needed for the position, the best candidate, as well as on issues like job title, compensation and the start date.
7. Lower the Risk of Hiring the Wrong Candidate
We touched on this a bit above. The risk of hiring the wrong candidate looms over every new hire. When you put invest money, effort and time to recruit a new employee, and you hire the wrong person, then you have to start from scratch and do it all over again. This involves additional costs and headaches. If you use an IT staffing agency for temporary hire, you get to “kick the tires” on a new candidate specifically chosen for your job by the IT staffing company. Then, if they’re not the right person, you can just ask for another one. If they do seem like the right hire, you get to see how they perform before you hire them full-time.
8. Let Someone Else Market the Job Position
Another way a staffing agency saves you money and time is because you don’t have to worry about advertising or marketing for the new job. The main reason you want to work with an IT staffing agency is to assume the responsibilities for the hiring processes that the company would normally perform. This includes advertising for a new hire.
While technology has helped focus advertising to more relevant audiences, the truth is, some of your advertising dollars are always going to go nowhere. When you work with an IT staffing agency, that’s not a concern. You just don’t need to advertise. You tell the staffing agency the type of person that you need, and they go out and find them for you.
When You Need to Hire a Skilled IT Professional, Contact The Computer Merchant
After your company has worked with an IT staffing agency, your company’s hiring manager will be asking you why you didn’t do so sooner. Even better, if you form a long-term relationship with an IT staffing agency, the agency will get to know the intricacies of your work culture, what makes your workplace tick and the kind of individual who fits in best — which makes it much easier to find the right person. Every time you work with them, the next hire gets easier and easier.
Since 1980, The Computer Merchant has been a premium provider of IT staffing services. A veteran-owned company, we deploy top talent across the U.S. and are ready and able to fill any IT job you need. We can help fill your skills gaps quickly, bring you the best IT people available using our database of over 10 million unique consulting profiles and get the job done on time while saving you money.
If you’re looking for the best IT people available, call us at 800-617-6172 or fill out our contact form with some details about the kind of person you need. If you’re an IT professional looking to work with our agency, visit our candidate portal, where you can see available jobs and find where you might fit in. A member of our team will get back to you as soon as possible.
