How Recruiting Support Can Help Overstretched HR Teams

Internal HR professionals are under pressure to complete a range of tasks to support a business. From helping existing employees in their roles to maintaining compliance, HR schedules can quickly become strained.

Overseeing the hiring process of new staff members is another considerable responsibility. Fitting in enough time to sift through resumes, schedule interviews and facilitate new-hire paperwork is a consistent struggle.

Other responsibilities, such as maintaining employee retention and engagement, can feel like a second thought amid the effort to hire new talent. This guide from Emerge Talent explores the benefits of outsourcing recruiting support to speed up time-to-fill and help you with busy workloads.

The Hidden Costs of an Overwhelmed HR Department

Beyond the impact of a never-ending to-do list and a full inbox, overworked HR teams are at risk of hiring unsuitable talent due to being stretched too thin. Inexperienced new hires can significantly affect company culture and, over time, take a toll on a company’s financial health.

The hidden costs of an overburdened HR team can emerge in the following areas:

Admin Efficiency

Typically, HR professionals can spend approximately 57% of the workday on new recruit administrative tasks. These tasks include screening job applications, setting up interviews and collating candidate feedback for successful and unsuccessful candidates.

Understandably, vetting potential new hires is an integral part of the role. However, it takes up a large portion of your time, leaving little for other responsibilities, including supporting existing staff in their roles.

The demands of recruitment can leave you feeling burned out while juggling your other responsibilities.

Cost of Filling Vacancies

The longer a vacancy is left open, the more productivity and revenue a company loses. It takes around 44 days to fill a role, which translates to approximately six weeks of lost revenue for a company. HR teams face pressure to fill vacancies as quickly as possible.

Hiring costs are a further consideration. For example, the average cost of a new hire is $4,700, including time, advertising and onboarding expenses. Some industries, such as engineering and cybersecurity, may incur larger new-hire costs due to staffing shortages. Unsuitable hires may cost your company approximately 30% of the hire’s first-year salary.

Hiring for Specialized Roles

Alongside your other duties, hiring for roles in specialized industries, including financial technology (fintech), requires you to uphold industry knowledge. The intricacies of these sectors can be challenging, especially when learning about candidate requirements and average industry salaries.

Recruiting for these roles without industry knowledge can lead you to put forward unsuitable candidates. Recruiters with industry-specific knowledge have the experience to hire for specialized roles.

3 Signs Your Business Needs Dedicated Recruiting Support

Recruitment surges are an exciting time for any company. However, the overload of recruiting tasks to fill your schedule may feel like a mountain to climb. The strain can easily take its toll on your team. Below are three indicators your team needs recruiting support to get you on the other side of the mountain:

1. The Rise of Ghosting

Interestingly, a survey showed that 70% of job seekers in the U.S. felt it was fair to ghost recruiters and potential employers during the recruitment process. A probable reason is that another job offer has come through. However, other overlooked factors could be poor communication and an inadequate interview procedure.

A heavy workload dedicated to supporting existing employees in day-to-day operations, such as payroll and compliance, may leave little time for recruitment. By the time you get around to responding to candidates, they may lose interest and decide to accept employment elsewhere.

2. Rapid Growth Measures

A recruitment drive is a promising sign of stable company growth. However, rapid growth also indicates ambitious hiring targets. There may be goals to reach, such as securing between five and 10 specialized hires in a 60-day time frame, which adds considerable pressure alongside your general responsibilities.

Introducing a subscription-based recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) or a flat-fee partner for support during recruitment surges is a valuable resource. The partner can deliver a personalized solution that aligns with your goals and helps you meet recruitment targets.

3. Low-Quality Hires

With high recruitment drives comes the possibility of rising staff turnover. A high volume of open positions can increase pressure to fill them without the attention to detail needed to vet candidates. When an employee leaves your company after a short time, the hiring process to fill the vacancy must start from the beginning.

Outsourcing recruitment support enables you to rely on experienced recruiters with the tools and time to vet candidates and find suitable fits.

Different Types of Recruiting Support for Overstretched HR Teams

Deciding to outsource recruiting support is the first step toward securing suitable candidates. The support you require depends on various factors, including the number of vacant positions and the time frame to fill them.

Transactional Staffing

If you need to fill a particular position under a tight deadline, working with a transactional staffing agency is a viable option. Transactional staffing is beneficial when urgency is the key driver to filling a position. However, urgency and a speedy recruitment process leave you vulnerable to unsuitable talent.

The outsourced recruiter is responsible for filling your vacancy as soon as possible. Urgency may lead to a less thorough evaluation of candidates against your company culture and their skill sets, such as skipping vital skill-based questions. Additionally, using a transactional staffing solution multiple times due to unsuitable candidates increases your costs.

Embedded Recruitment Partners

To build an ongoing relationship with experienced recruiters, seeking an embedded recruitment partner offers reassurance in finding the right candidates. When you integrate the recruitment partner into your email and applicant tracking system (ATS), the partner can help maintain brand consistency when interacting with potential candidates.

An embedded recruitment partner typically operates as a monthly subscription or flat-fee service based on open positions. The recruitment process focuses on vetting quality candidates rather than filling vacancies by a deadline.

Consultancy and Strategy

If you’re in a position where guidance on finding candidates is a more valuable tool, expert advice can steer you in the right direction. A consultant provides support on methods for finding talent and improving your internal recruitment process. These improvements may include changing the advertising channels or refining job descriptions.

Consultancy allows you to implement the improvement points without outsourcing the work. A consultant can advise on how to speed up recruitment without compromising quality and stretching workloads.

Improve the Recruiting Process With Embedded Support

Outsourcing your recruitment, especially during peak hiring periods, is priceless for securing competent candidates for your roles. All parties involved, from your HR team to the company and the candidates themselves, benefit from a seamless experience. Below are the reasons why embedded recruitment support makes a difference:

• Boosts speed: When you have a recruitment partner handle the time-consuming tasks of screening and scheduling candidates for interviews, your schedule becomes less daunting. Your recruitment partner has the time and tools to ensure you’re filling vacancies efficiently while maintaining quality.

• Flexible scalability: Adopting a flat-fee or monthly-subscription partner offers scalable pricing based on the number of vacancies. When your company experiences high recruitment demand, the recruitment support increases to meet this demand. During slower periods, the level of support can decrease to align with your goals.

• Access to premium talent: Enlisting a recruitment partner is an opportunity to tap in to a highly skilled network. Recruiters with specific industry knowledge have passive professional contacts that exceed the reach of posting a job advertisement on generic job boards. These partners have years of experience in particular industries, reducing the risk of low-quality hires.

• Better vetting techniques: Particularly for specialized roles, a recruitment partner can seek advice from industry professionals on required skills and qualifications. Reaching out to their contacts for guidance is a valuable tool to ensure you’re targeting the proper criteria and offers confidence when onboarding talent.

• Consistency for candidates: Frequent communication with potential candidates is a consistent issue for internal HR teams due to increasing workloads. Integrating with your ATS and email domain allows recruitment partners to maintain timely communication about application updates, interviews and offers.

  
  

How to Move From Hiring to Talent Acquisition

The goal for any HR team is to prioritize talent acquisition during the recruitment process. Instead, the pressure of securing candidates within a time frame to hit targets takes over. Talent acquisition is achievable through a strategy of focusing on the long-term benefits.

Focus on Retention

Outsourcing recruitment efforts to a partner with experience and knowledge of your industry leaves you free to work on retention of existing talent. Changing the course of the day-to-day by improving the employee experience allows existing workers to feel valued and keeps your workforce motivated.

Finding ways to keep existing employees engaged positively impacts productivity and shapes a proactive workplace culture.

Build a Long-Term Partnership

Fostering a mutually beneficial relationship with an embedded recruitment partner allows them to build on their growing knowledge of your company. Communication with candidates becomes a streamlined process to offer a consistent experience, such as adopting your company’s tone of voice.

Secure Your Financial Health

Time-to-fill costs can rise and accumulate when you’re working with a recruitment agency that charges unpredictable percentages. Seeking a partnership with a flat-fee or monthly-subscription outsourcing partner provides quality and a cost-effective solution to finding new talent.

Levels of support may vary depending on demand. However, subscription and flat-fee models provide financial predictability and are well-suited to HR budgeting.

7 Tips to Choose a Recruitment Partner

Recruitment partnerships are not a one-size-fits-all solution. Before reaching out to the first recruitment partner you find, it’s essential to conduct due diligence and find the right partnership for your HR team. The following seven tips will help you in your search:

• Investigate industry experience: Knowledge about your industry makes a difference to recruitment efforts. Primarily, if you’re recruiting for specialized roles, a recruiter must uphold a working knowledge of the industry to understand what you’re looking for in candidates. Vetting candidates is a more straightforward process with a knowledgeable recruiter.

• Ensure recruitment alignment: The optimal starting point for conversations is outlining what you need from a recruitment partner. For example, relay your business goals and clearly explain what you hope to achieve from the partnership, including scalability and quality. A reputable partner tailors their approach to meet your expectations.

• Discuss recruiter responsibilities: Multiple recruiters working on your account confuses the recruiters and your team. Clarify how the setup works with the partnership and whether it’s possible to assign particular individuals. Having the same people handle your recruitment delivers consistency and a better candidate experience.

• Learn the vetting process: An experienced recruitment partner has a tried and tested screening method to find suitable candidates. Discuss the evaluation of a candidate’s experience and how the screening aligns with your company’s culture.

• Set communication targets: Candidates expect timely communication throughout the recruitment process. Without consistent updates, candidates are likely to look elsewhere for employment opportunities. Assess a recruitment partner's typical response times and communication templates for updates to candidates and hiring managers.

• Analyze costs: Evaluate the costs carefully to determine what a subscription or flat fee includes. Consider the level of ongoing support in a partnership and the value it brings, rather than expensive percentage models.

• Confirm brand representation: The recruitment partner is responsible for liaising with candidates and contacts on your behalf. Discuss how the partner establishes your tone of voice and values across all correspondence.

  
  

Scale Your Team Without the Stress

The time and effort required to screen candidates, facilitate interviews and organize onboarding put significant strain on an HR team’s calendar. Recruitment is an integral part of HR, but the administrative effort needed to secure the right talent can take its toll.

The repercussions of an overworked HR team can lead to growing concerns across multiple areas. For example, poor-quality hires and reduced support for existing employees affect retention rates. The option of transactional staffing leaves your HR team in a pattern of repeating the same mistakes with reactive hiring.

Building a firm relationship with an embedded recruitment partner provides the support you require to fill vacancies confidently. Flexible support and predictable costs allow you to scale your team, meet long-term objectives and maintain financial stability.

Experienced recruiters have the knowledge to oversee time-to-fill and help you onboard the right candidates.

Linked Sources:

1. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm

2. https://www.emergetalent.com/post/ai-is-revolutionizing-the-recruitment-process-5-

ways

3. https://www.emergetalent.com/post/the-benefits-of-outsourcing-your-recruitment

4. https://www.emergetalent.com/post/7-reasons-to-outsource-recruiting

5. https://www.emergetalent.com/rpo

6. https://www.emergetalent.com/contact