The ROI of Temp Staffing

Although temp staffing is not a new concept many companies have yet to experience the ROI that accompanies the wise, regular use of temp staffing services. Hiring can be an expensive proposition, and not every position in your company is one that needs to be filled all the time, especially if your work is project driven. Once you think of temp staffing in terms of a resource that can increase your ROI, you’re in a better position to increase revenue and re-allocate resources to other areas.

Let’s quickly look at four ways temp staffing boosts ROI.

Reduce HR Costs

When hiring a full-time employee, it can take a while to recuperate the costs expended in the job search and hiring process. Between advertising the position, interviewing, inputting the employee in the payroll system, and training, these costs add up quickly. Before the employee even begins working for you, you’ve already racked up some hefty costs. With temp staffing, however, you can get a skilled, trained worker without expending any resources up front. As soon as a temp worker begins working for you, you get a return on your investment.

Results Right Away

Most temps hired by companies to fulfill short-term work are already experienced in their respective fields and can begin producing results immediately. Although you may have to explain the task at hand, temp workers are accustomed to jumping into new situations and successfully executing a job within a specific time limit. Again, your ROI is high because you don’t have to invest much into getting quick results.

Experience in Specialty Operational Areas

Your regular, full-time employees have lots of skills, but they don’t know how to do everything. Instead of asking one of your full-time employees to “take a stab” at a job he or she isn’t trained to do, bring in a temp worker to take care of the job with precision and accuracy. Your temp staffing agency can locate people skilled in the non-core area and send the workers to your business for as little or as long as you need them–until the job is accomplished. Your ROI is higher when you temporarily get the skills you need than when you pay a non-skilled worker to bumble through a task.

Just a few of our skilled temp/contractors available:

Producer
Production Engineer
Audio Engineer
AV Installation Technician
AV Installation Engineer
RF Engineer
Installation Engineer
Design Engineer
CAD Drafter
Field Engineer
Master Control Operators
Photographer
Videographer

Do Away With Overtime

Nothing reduces your staffing ROI investment like overtime. Not only is overtime financially costly, but you may also lose customers due to backlogs during your peaks in demand. Let a temp staffing agency keep you fully staffed at all times without having to pay overtime costs, and you’ll see your ROI go through the roof. Even very conservative estimates show a healthy ROI when the heavy costs of overtime are eliminated.

Temp staffing plays an important role in the financial well-being of many companies. Whether you are sinking under the weight of HR costs or suffering from a lack of skilled labor for specific non-core operational areas, temp staffing can source the top talent you need to run as smoothly and efficiently as possible. Without the heavy costs of overtime, you can direct your resources to more productive areas of your business thereby improving your ROI.

Final Thought

None of the above even addresses the hard expenses when hiring direct.  Insurance, Taxes, Vacation Pay, Sick Pay and Associated Support Labor are to just name a few.  For more information please contact The Mink Company as we would be happy to discuss our service offerings.

In today’s world, it really is hard to tell if a candidate is a good fit for your open position or your company culture.  You can interview someone all day long, look at their perfectly laid out resume and still ask yourself “Are they right for us?”  I myself have been fooled several times over the years by people who can present themselves very well in the interview setting with all the right answers and a great looking resume then finding out they are a very bad fit for the company.  

Luckily, easy screenings using social media sometimes reveal a candidate’s true colors. Social media screens are suggested standard practice for any hire. Make sure to check with legal counsel to understand what employers may or may not consider and say about social media profiles, before and after an employee is hired.

Are They Respectful

Twitter should be the first place you look.  Most users keep their profile public so you can easily see a person’s tweets and retweets and who they follow.

-Everyone I work with is an idiot.
-My boss is a pain in the rear.
-I hate working here.

These are all tweets I have seen people post.  They speak for themselves and for me would probably raise a red flag.  

Precision

Does all your candidate’s information match from all sources.  A big one is Linked In.  Work history and education discrepancies between Linked In and their resume can raise the red flag.  Now could this just be something overlooked by your candidate?  Sure, but if there is suspicion in the first place this is a good way to help weed out any potential untruths.

Issues With Anger

Many times Facebook and Twitter users use these accounts to voice opinions.  What you are looking for is anger filled rants, threats, vulgarity or racist comments or postings.  Someone active on these social platforms will most times reveal these types of personalities and can be useful in making a hiring decision.

Other personal qualities to watch for include narcissism, nudity, hate speech, violence, excessive profanity, and bad grammar.  Have they talked about being sued or getting someone fired?   

Remember all of the items above are reminders to us all to be aware of what we post on our social accounts.  They can be used in a hiring process and decide the Yes or No decision.

I found this guide at rework.withgoogle.com and thought it would be good to share with everyone.  There really are some good tips and it is good to review occasionally to make sure your interviews are being conducted in the best possible way.

In today’s hiring climate, it’s more important than ever to be successful at:

1. Attracting talent
2. Cultivating a long-term pipeline of candidates

We found that the interview (and interviewers in particular) is the biggest driver of a candidate’s overall satisfaction with the hiring process, and their interview experience can make or break a decision to accept an offer.

One of the hardest things to do during the interview process is to strike the right balance between assessing the candidate’s skills with challenging questions and encouraging the candidate that the company is the right place for them to start or continue a career. For the company, you want to demonstrate the scope of the work and the mission of your company. For candidates, they want to feel like your company is seeking their talent, and that they can make an impact and a home once they join. It’s important to remember that candidates are evaluating you as much as you are them.

When interviewing a candidate, there’s a lot to remember, but we generally break it down into two categories:

• Questions
• Behavior

Tips for asking questions

Questions should probe based on the attribute you’re trying to assess. In general, we try to do the following:

• Open with a behavioral question or “tell me about a time when…” question about the candidate’s experience. This gets them to talk about something they know and will calm them down before diving into anything related to hypothetical, or more specifically, general knowledge or coding questions.
• Make it clear what we’re looking for when asking the question. A common complaint from candidates is that they weren’t sure what the interviewer wanted from an answer or how much time they should spend trying to figure it out.
• Be flexible. Understand when a candidate is failing and either give a hint to get their thoughts moving or guide the conversation to a different question. If the candidate is taking too long on a single question, gently switch topics. Here’s a good example of this: “To be mindful of time, why don’t we move on to a different topic? We can revisit this if you would like at the end.”
• Overall, be in charge of the time. Leave time for candidate questions and try not to go over, as it will create a lag time for all subsequent interviewers.
• Avoid questions that prompt candidates to reveal information about a protected status:

	“Which country are you from?”
	“Are you available to work on religious holidays?”
	“Do you have a work permit?”
	“How did you learn that foreign language?”
	Candidate: “What are the best schools in this area?” Interviewer: “How old are your kids?”

Tips for interviewer behavior

An interviewer’s attitude is essential to providing a great experience. Interviewers might do hundreds of interviews, but for the candidate, this might be their first (and only) interview experience at your company.

During an interview, we think the best way to make the candidate feel comfortable is to be comfortable around them. Here’s an interview and candidate experience breakdown, based on a 30, 45, or 60 minute interview.

 

Interview step	Timing	Actions to take
Introduction	2/5/7 min	●     Show up on time ●     Ask if candidate needs a drink, snack, or restroom break ●     Sit 90° from candidate and try to grab a view of the door ●     Introduce yourself and your team ●     Preface interview with a mention about your note-taking behavior
Questions	20/32/40 min	●     Open with a behavioral/experience-based question ●     Ask questions! ●     Keep the interview conversational ●     Frame your questions so candidates know what you’re looking for ●     Be flexible about probing further, moving on, or switching topics ●     Be aware of your time ●     Engage with the candidate (make eye contact, nod, etc.)
Candidate questions	5/5/8 min	●     Be humble (throughout the interview as well) ●     Give honest answers, and give the candidate a sense of the role/team
Thank and sell	3/3/5 min	●     Highlight the reasons you like working at your company ●     Try to tie how their skills and interests would fit in well at your company (they need to be able to imagine working here) ●     Thank the candidate for their time

How to avoid the most common traps

Here is some advice based on the most common themes we see from candidate feedback.

• Show up on time. Being late throws off the candidate’s confidence, might take away from other interviewers’ time, and shows a general lack of respect.
• Don’t start right into the questions! Candidates and interviewers both often mention this as a negative experience.
• Make eye contact. A common complaint from candidates is that the interviewer was buried in note-taking. Take thorough notes, but conversational interviews require a high level of interaction.
• Be humble. Another common piece of feedback is that interviewers seem like gatekeepers, judging a candidate in a high-pressure situation. No matter the candidate’s performance, they should feel like they answered a challenging but role-related question, and that you are working with them to assess their skill, not showing off your own.
• Reassure the candidate. Don’t let a candidate believe they are failing. Not all candidates will be successful in their interview, but it does not help them to feel like they don’t have any chance at success.
  • Nod or engage with the candidate as they talk through their answer. Not only does this encourage them, but it shows that you are actively listening to their ideas.
  • Avoid saying things like “I was actually looking for this answer…” or “you should have thought about the problem this way” — it doesn’t help the candidate to know that they failed, and you likely have to move on anyway.

The Mink Company – SWOT Analysis

For many years, businesses have asked the question should I use a staffing agency to assist with full time and contract placements.  In an effort to help companies make an educated decision on this TMC has done a SWOT analysis.  What is a SWOT analysis?  It identifies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to any business related question you might have.  It might not fit your business environment 100% but it will give you some additional information to make an informed decision whether or not to use TMC as your staffing agency.

Internal
Strengths	Weaknesses
1.       You will have access to a vast network of industry specific candidates.  TMC has thousands of job seekers already in our database for the AV, IT and broadcasting industries. 2.       You will save money.  The US Bureau of Labor & Statistics states the average cost of adding a new employee is $58,000.  This includes screening candidates, manager and employee back fill overtime. 3.       You will have a guaranteed hire.  TMC provides a 90-day guarantee on any new hire. 4.       You get to try before you buy.  Contract to hire is a TMC staffing option.  If the candidate is not a good fit, you can move on without risk. 5.       Your managers will have more time to focus on the day to day business instead of searching and pre-screening potential candidates.	1.       You will still need to review resumes and pre-screen candidates. You will still need to do some screening, but TMC will only send you candidates that we feel are qualified for the position.  Your time doing this will be very minimal. 2.       Your business will not need an internal recruiting team.  For some this may be difficult to adjust too.
External
Opportunities	Threats
1.       Have the ability to expand and constrict your labor force easily by using contract employees. 2.       Management will have more time to focus on business resulting in satisfied customers and a faster growth. 3.       Your business will have access to candidates that an internal recruiter would not have access too. 4.       Improvement of productivity from current employees.  TMC can help fill vacant positions quickly which will help reduce employee burnout by filling in for insufficient staff.	1.       You will rely on external sources to provide your new candidate funnel.  TMC will ensure that you have the candidates you need to fill your open positions.
SWOT Analysis Summary
Employers have difficulty finding qualified candidates to fill job openings. Many are quick to say there is a talent pool that lacks job skills, business knowledge, experience and formal qualifications. At the same time staffing agencies are sometimes avoided because companies believe cost to be a barrier. Frankly, this is the furthest from the truth. Employers should weigh the cost of lost opportunity by having a position unfilled, the cost of having a poor hire, and the endless and tiresome cost of searching for a candidate.  The advantages greatly out-weigh the weaknesses and threats.