In the staffing world, particularly in an agency setting, efficiency is paramount. As new technologies continue to emerge, it’s instinctual to want to jump on what’s new to stay ahead of the game. But what’s new might not be what’s right — at least not for everyone all the time.
I’ve worked in the staffing industry for two decades, and just like a lot of you reading this, I started as a recruiter. I’ve since worked my way up through management to eventually hold responsibility for internal technology operations as well as the supervision and training of sales team members. My tenure in my current role has been a fulfilling opportunity to apply my experiences from all levels up the chain of command to our employee-centric, experience-based technology mindset.
As a highly specialized staffing firm, the candidates my company places land not only in high-level roles but in impactful industries nationally including technology, healthcare IT, cybersecurity, medical devices, pharmaceutical and more.
Rather than transactional search, match and place processes, we view our role as our consultants’ career managers. We take pride in this dynamic and our thorough cultivation of relationships to understand nuances that, we’ve found, technology simply cannot account for — not yet, anyway.
Because much of our staff, including our technology team, have held roles of varying seniority and subject expertise, we try to bring empathy for the experience of employees at all levels to the table, and we encourage our peers to do the same. For us, it’s been the primary channel through which we’ve identified pathways to optimize our teams’ dynamics. These pathways have led us to enhancements of established processes through custom tools that fill gaps where third-party technology offerings in the staffing industry don’t meet our needs.
The biggest piece of advice I can offer is to take a step back and fully understand the problems you’re trying to solve — and more importantly, their root causes — before diving into the solutions available. The familiar adage “Measure twice, cut once” comes to mind.
Picture this: A staffing firm seeks a method of sourcing more candidates for a given role. Their natural thought is to implement a tool that automates the process of matching candidates to jobs. Zoom out. Is the issue at hand volume of applicants, or quality of candidates? If it’s the former, if these individuals aren’t the right fit, the automation tool may not be as beneficial as hoped. Perhaps the fix is technology that streamlines processes elsewhere and therefore returns time to recruiters, time which is spent speaking with candidates to create a pool of applicants whose qualifications more closely align with the roles you’re looking to fill.
Our industry is not one size fits all, and it’s important to look inward to determine what’s right for your organization — how can you best support your specific processes, and how do the programs you select or create provide your recruiters with the tools necessary to address issues before they occur? Maybe it is an automated matching tool. Just as the companies and candidates we support are diverse, as are we, the staffing firms behind those matches. Thus, so are the solutions we seek.
With the introduction of any new platform, we closely consider whether the integrity of our process will remain upon its implementation, and we continuously strive for balance between the utilization of existing tools and ownership of custom applications to maximize our abilities. Through this, we’ve centralized our technology platforms to build a unified vision and strategy.
As a result, we’ve fostered space for employee development, streamlined processes and focused on topic specialization, which have in turn improved our overall performance. And so, my fellow staffing professionals and leaders, before you invest in that great new technology that’s the talk of the town — I encourage you to ask yourselves, “Who are you building or buying technology for and why?”