If you are wondering why you would use a staffing agency for temporary or permanent recruiting needs, there are many excellent reasons why you can benefit from their services. This top five list addresses the most beneficial reasons to consider using a temporary staffing or permanent recruitment firm – Liability, Cost, Flexibility, Expertise & Time.
On with the list!
- Liability: When you engage the services and/or employee of a staffing firm, they are not your employee. Therefore, you have no liability for their workers comp, professional/general liability, payroll taxes and unemployment claims.
- Cost: Though you will pay a service fee or hourly mark up to a staffing/recruiting firm, you need to keep in mind that they are paying all of the workers comp, professional/general liability insurance, state and federal payroll taxes. Generally this adds up to about 12% of what the staffing firm pays the employee. So if they are paying someone $15/hour they are paying out $1.80 on top of that to cover the above mentioned expenses associated with employing that person, not you. The leftover amount between the pay rate and client bill rate is what the agency makes as profit.
- Flexiblity: When you need a temporary employee or frankly any employee, there is a lot of expense and time incurred to find the qualified and best candidate for your job. When you only need someone for a few weeks or months, why do this in house when it can be outsourced to an agency that specializes in your type of position and therefore already has the recruitment advertising dollars spent and qualified candidates lined up? You are able to use the agency’s employee as much or little as you need and can discontinue their assignment once your work is complete.
- Expertise: There are staffing agencies and recruiters that specialize in any industry or position you can imagine. By working with an agency or recruiter that has a specialty for your type of position, you will immediately access the exact talent pool you are trying to reach, as well as upping your chances of getting the best possible candidate. The time a specialized agency or recruiter will take to fill your position will also be significantly less since they only work with candidates with specific skills sets.
- Time: Let’s face it, almost all of us could use a little more time in our days to get more done. Recruiting, screening and hiring a candidate whether temporary or long term takes a significant amount of advertising dollars and your personal time. When you are in a larger company it is easier to handle temporary or permanent staffing needs because employees have more specialized roles such as hiring manager or recruiter. Small to Medium sized businesses can benefit the most from engaging the services of a staffing agency, since they are typically wearing «many hats» in their current role and may not have the bandwidth to add another task to their daily activities, especially a significant one such as recruiting & hiring.