What to Look for in a Staffing & Recruiting Firm: A Checklist

No two staffing firms are alike. Even among lists of the most highly rated firms, their services, processes, and philosophies are as unique as your own, and picking one at random is unlikely to result in long-term success. So what should you look for in a staffing and recruiting firm that can best serve your company?

First and foremost, recognize the importance of choosing a partner whose values and culture align with your own. Without that foundation, it’s unlikely the relationship will hold any longevity. Even if they find you a handful of quality candidates, differences in priorities or processes may risk a successful placement. For instance, if your company values work-life balance for your employees, but your staffing and recruiting firm prioritizes quotas over their people, the mis-match will manifest itself in the very people you end up hiring.

Quotas aren’t inherently a bad thing, but for staffing firms that live and die by them, it’s likely their relationships will suffer. Filling your inbox full of resumes to see what sticks is not a long-term strategy. Neither is an unhealthy focus on staffing technology that automates most of the processes. Instead, look for a staffing firm that prioritizes the human element of the recruitment process. Technology and process are key ingredients to successful staffing and recruiting, but relationships are the glue that sticks it all together.

A staffing firm may have all the best intentions to serve their clients well, but if they don’t measure what they’re doing, success will be harder to achieve. And to be clear, it’s not just ratios of interviews to placements or consultant retention statistics that you’ll want to find out about. Look for a staffing and recruiting partner that also measures the experience of their clients and candidates. They might do this internally, or they might measure experience through a third party like Great Recruiters, a platform for collecting candidate feedback, and through a partner that measures their Net Promoter Score. When a staffing firm takes the initiative to discover the perspective of their clients and candidates, you know they’re a genuine partner.

We’re all familiar with the age-old adage that a Jack of All Trades is Master of None. As cliché as it sounds, it’s no less true when it comes to choosing a staffing and recruiting partner. A successful partnership is founded on the firm’s thorough understanding of your industry and the associated challenges you have in finding quality candidates. Find out about their history as a company, as well as the experience and tenure of the specific recruiters you’re working with. A staffing firm’s market expertise will also help ensure that their network of talent is uniquely focused on the specific skillsets you’re looking for.

It’s no secret that turnover in the staffing industry is often sky-high. Too often, companies are only focused on the bottom line and care little for their employees. When you find a company that cares, their employees stick around, and it’s those employees with the expertise, passion, and engagement that will lead to staffing success.

You’ve likely worked with a handful of staffing companies to help you fill positions in the past. But that experience doesn’t make choosing a new staffing partner any easier. Make sure your decision covers all the bases so that you can build a long-term relationship that will continue to deliver quality candidates again and again.

Curious what Brightwing can bring to the table? Discover the Brightwing difference today.

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