The process of the pros

What’s in a process? If it’s how you procure your most valuable asset – talent – then one might say the process is everything.

For all the good that technology has brought to commerce, it has also had an adverse effect on the staffing industry. Too many companies now-a-days have become complacent by relying on technology for the rigors of sourcing and assessing talent.

For a large portion of the staffing industry, simply cutting and pasting client requirements on the job boards has become the norm by way of sourcing for talent. To add insult to that injury, once a level of talent is identified, these same companies provide no other added value other than a cursory, fifteen-minute phone screen before passing the résumé to the client for consideration.

In our opinion, there is little added value in this ‘process’, if you can even call it that. At Arrow Strategies, our go-to-market approach has two sides:

First, we target recruit-passive candidates who are not on the job boards and are the best in class. And second, we stand behind a rigorous 10-step recruiting process. Once the right talent is identified, these 10 steps help to groom the candidates, and they delve much deeper than a fifteen-minute phone screen.

You might be surprised to learn that some staffing companies do not take the time to meet their candidates in person prior to submitting them to roles. On the other hand, after a thorough initial phone screen, we meet 100% of our candidates as the second step in our recruiting process. We have found, in addition to being able to better represent them to the client, and being able to attest to their presentation skills (because we have actually met them!), most top candidates prefer to meet the Agent that will be representing them – which is no different than meeting a realtor or attorney before you decide they are the right fit to work with.

In addition, we have our candidates engage in a team interview so we have more than one opinion of their strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, we have our candidates engage in technical and personality assessments, conduct thorough reference checks, and finally we perform a “last check” step to ensure the candidate meets the client expectations. All of these steps and checks are completed prior to even submitting the candidate for consideration!

So if you’re tiring of your staffing firms submitting unqualified and unprepared candidates, or candidates with waning interest in your position, I would start talking to your talent providers about their process – or lack thereof. And more importantly, I would have them demonstrate their processes in order to ensure they are actually doing what they claim to be doing. Proof by way of compliance is quickly becoming the new norm in talent acquisition and those firms who actually have a process and execute it accordingly, welcome this new level of compliance with open arms. Through these processes, the end result should be getting back on track with your talent acquisition goals!