Contract Recruiting

Talent Acquisition – The Move Towards Managed Recruiting Services

The need to hire the right people, at the right time, is a key business issue. Whether you refer to it as executive search, executive recruiting, permanent placement, or direct placement, we deliver an advanced recruiting solutions to help you recruit the top executive, sales, operations talent you need. In addition to our permanent placement services, we are one of the markets leading provider of contract recruiting and recruitment consulting services.

Executive Search firms can be an effective resource for bringing qualified candidates into the hiring process. Unless retained, however, a search firm will probably be working with you on a non-exclusive contingency basis. While true that you only pay a fee if you hire, the relationship you have established with the search firm is likely to be “arms length”, at best.

Many companies are utilizing a variety of staffing alternatives in today’s business environment. Contract recruiting often provides the flexibility needed to accommodate a changing economy. The EMAC Groups’ contract recruiting alternative delivers the level of talent you expect from a traditional retained search firm. We have deep expertise in research and networking and have the ability to find highly talented candidates providing immediate response, which means critical positions are filled in a timely manner.

Managed Recruiting: Needs and Strategies

Acquiring talent typically employs a combination of three strategic inputs: internal recruiters; external recruitment agencies; and other external resources, such as newspapers/print media, or Internet sites. In each case, there are trade-offs in terms of cost, quality and timeliness for choosing one option over another.

  • Internal RecruitersThe use of internal recruiters is a business investment issue. While it is important for businesses to attract qualified candidates, the investment made in internal recruiting resources is significant and it does not guarantee that the function will be first rate.
  • External Recruitment Agencies The use of specialist agencies can achieve superior results based on the use of best-in- class processes, technologies, and people. These firms can also provide an effective screening mechanism, funneling only qualified candidates to the HR department. However, all of this specialization comes at a price: external recruitment agencies can be very costly on a per-hire basis.
  • Other External Resources The use of print media or Internet sites (the business’ own Website or an online job board) raises the issue of quality. Posting job descriptions on these sources will likely increase the volume of responses; however, it will not address the issue of quality, in terms of the candidates applying for a position. In fact, the greater the volume of responses the more difficult, time consuming sifting through unqualified prospect and costly it becomes for businesses to identify qualified candidate.

Human resources and recruiting experts agree that the best possible person for the open position is not likely to be encountered by posting a job on a job board. It happens from time to time, but it is not probable. Commonly referred to as “passive job seekers” and “hidden talent”, there is a huge potential candidate pool that always exists outside of the typical posting/response recruiting effort. Most companies hire on a contract recruiter arrangement to handle heavy sourcing, screening and full-cycle recruiting. In some cases, companies hire contract recruiters to assist with heavy process task load and to help coordinate the recruiting effort.

In general, most Corporate Recruiters are far too busy trying to keep pace with an overwhelming stream of job applicants for multiple requisitions while juggling a heavy task load to support the demands of the typical corporate recruiting process. A Corporate Recruiter must be focused on working with qualified candidates and maintaining strong communication with both candidates and hiring managers.

There is almost never enough time for the typical Corporate Recruiter to step outside the confines of the highly reactive process created by posting jobs on internal and external job boards. This is where the dedicated contract recruiting Specialist comes in.

Benefits of Contract Recruiting Relative to Other External Resources

The issue of quality is paramount in the talent recruitment and it impacts a number of issues that traditional sources cannot match. Quality is an important issue for overall recruitment process. The adage “garbage in – garbage out” applies to talent acquisition services and the adherence to best-in-class processes allows recruitment providers to filter out undesirable candidates from the long list of candidates and generate a short list of Ideal Candidates. Candidate Source can help you pinpoint your target audience using a number of powerful filters that include geography, company size, industry, and job title.

The use of recruitment professionals fully engaged in their field of expertise, serves to enhance the overall level of candidate quality that contract recruiting provides to our client. Additionally, a good recruiter would never interviews a great candidate without getting the name and contact information of their references increasing the Talent Pool for future candidates.

The EMAC Group is a proactive talent scouts and are often the first point of contact with prospective candidates in the recruiting effort. Using the telephone, email, instant messaging and web-based communications, we can initiate thousands of contacts with relevant professionals in order to identify high performing industry professionals. Sourcing qualified Ideal Candidates is recognized as one of the most important functions in the recruiting process and is the heart of every highly successful talent-building recruiting campaign.

The EMAC Recruiter is an experienced, hands-on recruiting professional working on contract rate in defined term (ex. 6 month) or open-ended (ex. month-to-month) contract engagements. Like other consultants, our contract recruiters work assignments on-site at corporate offices as an integrated team member, off-site from the Orlando office or virtually according to client preferences.

Clients will be billed at a contract rate as opposed to a placement fee, which means clients pay less than what contingent fee and significantly less than traditional retained fees.

In addition to proactive candidate sourcing measures, contract recruiting is often deployed to handle the front end of candidate recruiting for the corporate recruiter. The expertise of a contract recruiter can contribute to identifying and screening qualified candidates.

By handling a large volume of candidates and resumes and by providing the first level screening, a Contract Sourcing Specialist can significantly impact the speed of the recruiting process and ultimately, the time to fill job requisitions and reduce the cost per hire.

Nearly all Fortune 500 companies engage Contract Recruiters on an ongoing basis or intermittently. Many other large, medium and smaller size companies also use Contract Recruiters.

Contract Recruiting:

  1. Communicate in mass to relevant potential talent
  2. Identify hidden or passive high performing industry talent
  3. Generate a continuous pipeline of talent for recurrent positions
  4. Open alternate channels and networks through which hidden or passive talent can be attracted by an opportunity
  5. Increase candidate quality and quantity
  6. Expedite recruiting processes by handling resume reviews and job applications in large volume
  7. Contribute to the reduction of time to fill and cost per hire

When you are faced with making multiple critical hires under the pressure of limited time, a Contract Recruiter may be your best solution.

Companies in size ranging from Fortune 500 to small start-ups regularly utilize Contract Recruiters as a cost-effective, well-managed way to accomplish short and mid range recruiting objectives.

A skilled Contract Recruiter can represent a very strong value proposition for your company and bring a wealth of benefits:

  • Increase or decrease the size of your recruiting team size on the fly.
  • Bring aboard a highly experienced Recruiter who would otherwise exceed your salary parameters on a full time hire.
  • Observe varying levels of expertise among a wider group of Recruiters and develop performance benchmarks.
  • Add temporary expertise when making selection and hiring process or system refinements such as the implementation of a new ATS (applicant tracking system) or RMS (resume/recruitment management system).
  • Increase your internal “client” satisfaction by providing greater support to hiring managers under pressure to make critical hires.
  • Create your own internal RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) in real time, without the long term commitments and organizational impact complications.
  • Develop an internal search firm capability. Adding both sourcing and recruiting proficiency, you can implement a talent pipeline generation capability internally for key recurrent positions.
  • Unbundle your process to increase performance and hiring manager satisfaction. Hire a team of one or more contract recruiting specialists to handle the sourcing function and maximize candidate quality/quantity while allowing your full-time Recruiters more time dedicated to hiring manager relationships.
  • Fill a potential performance gap when one of your recruiting team members takes a leave of absence.
    Elevate your candidate experience (a key to both hiring and retention successes).
  • Meet objectives, executive and departmental priorities and project deadlines without a loss in recruiting performance. Hire a contract recruiting specialist to assist in employer brand development, job description templates, candidate attraction strategies, competitive recruitment tactics, sourcing strategies, etc.
  • Add specialization and focus. Bring visibility and awareness to key recruiting initiatives within your department such as diversity recruiting.

Create a Recruiting Campaign – Promote Your Company with a true “Client Showcase”!

There are good reasons to engage us in this way and they are outlined in this separate article – ‘Why Engage Us Exclusively’ For more information, please contact us to start your search today!