Finding Good Staff

Finding good staff poses a challenge for all organizations. It does not matter whether a company is large or small, there are always challenges to finding staff that are qualified, prepared and of a positive mindset. In many ways, you could say that finding staff in itself is not a problem – that is quite easy. Finding good staff is a different matter.

Whenever you are looking for manpower, you have the choice of hiring new staff or outsourcing the work. Looking into the future of staff recruitment more challenges are projected. Now, depending on whether you are operating a small company or you work in the human resources department of a large corporation, your staff recruitment strategies may vary a little. The three best ways to recruit staff is in-house through cross training existing staff, through specialized recruitment agencies, directly from colleges and universities and by word of mouth.

Look for Specialized Recruitment Agencies

Recruitment agencies are a great way to get exposure to the cream of the crop in your industry. Even if you are not looking for staff right now, you should familiarize yourself with local agencies so that you can contact them quickly when the need arises. Recruitment agencies work one hundred percent of the time on filling their rolodexes with the contact details of highly qualified professionals. Now, if you decide to use a recruitment agency, work with an agency that specializes exclusively in your particular industry. The fact that they cater exclusively to your industry will serve to draw professionals in your field directly to them and their agency. Therefore you, in turn, will naturally expose your company to some of the best workers in your industry by using a specialized agency.

The Cost of Using Recruitment Agencies

Recruitment agencies do charge fees and commissions for the work that they do. Fees can be quite high but most employers see this as worth the time and money that they save by not having to spend time looking for new talent themselves. There is usually a set placement fee or a commission that is charged based on a percentage of the new recruit’s salary for an agreed period of time. In most instances, fees are usually only paid when an individual has been placed successfully and has stayed with the job for an agreed minimum period of time.

Find Budding Professionals

In addition to using recruitment agencies to find professional, qualified people, you should also make it a practice to regularly hire college interns during the summer months and close to graduation time. Hiring interns gives you an excellent opportunity to consider someone for permanent employment in an extremely low-commitment way. During the period of their internship, you will be able to see how they work, see how they interact with others and monitor their working habits. By the time that they leave, you will have a good idea as to whether or not they are suitable for a permanent position in your company.

The Advantages of Interns

College interns are usually contracted to a company for a specific period of time. They are often contracted on a volunteer basis and therefore cost your company next to nothing in expenses. In addition to this, interns are generally well educated and thus have the potential to move to highest positions in your company. Interns that are preparing to graduate will often be looking for permanent work and therefore working with them is often a win-win situation for everyone involved. If you are consistent in hiring interns regularly, you will soon be one of the first companies that schools will contact to introduce their latest crop of budding, future businessmen.

Find the Skills Required

It is great to find people with great potential as I have described above. You also need to find skilled workers. More importantly, people that have the skills that your company needs. By understanding your projects, you will understand what skill sets people need to come to your company with as well as how many people with those skills that you need on your staff team. Staff can be required to attend in-house training sessions however these will often not be specialized enough to provide high level training. The more skills that a potential employee presents the better for your company.

Word of Mouth Recruitment

Lastly, as throughout history there is nothing quite like word of mouth. Look around your current staff team. Who in your current team is a hard worker, punctual and committed to their position? The chances are, they have an extensive, social network full of people just like themselves. When you have a position open in your company, talk to the people that work for you and ask them if they know of anyone that qualifies for the opening. Although referrals are a great source of talent be wise about how you hire referrals. Although cliques in the work place happen almost by nature, be careful about grouping people that are life long friends together in the same department. This can easily get out of hand producing negative issues of
control.