In the constant quest to deliver new talent supply strategies beyond staples like traditional sourcing, recruitment and placement, direct sourcing is a good place for staffing companies to start.
According to SIA research, despite the threat of a potential global recession, more than half (52%) of contingent workforce managers expect to increase their future direct sourcing development.
Although staffing companies are new entrants in this space, they are quickly realizing that taking the reins for deploying direct sourcing solutions for their customers and building client assets via customized talent pools their customer can regularly access gives them a massive competitive differentiator.
SASR Workforce Solutions (SASR), a staffing company serving the retail space, is taking on that challenge.
SASR puts their own spin on direct sourcing with their “Ready to Workforce” solution with an emphasis on candidate experience, which improves quality and reduces attrition.
“We partner with many national clients in the retail, grocery and convenience store industries on a wide range of workforce solutions and saw first-hand the need for specialized sourcing,” says Brad Barritt, VP of operations at SASR. “We re-tooled our existing tech infrastructure so that we can create customized talent pools that our clients can draw upon to fill their needs. This has accelerated our growth with our most strategic clients and enables SASR to provide significant efficiencies to their businesses.”
The retail/grocery/convenience store sector, SASR’s stronghold, is uncharted territory for direct sourcing. With its high volume sourcing and unpredictability in demand, this sector requires a niche expertise and targeted technology strategy. SASR’s direct sourcing technology approach was to start from “where they were, with the tech and people they already had.”
Per Dustin Talley, founder of Talent Simplified who was tasked with designing and deploying SASR’s direct sourcing solution, “SASR has positioned their customers to benefit from their existing technology investments by configuring their ATS and CRM in a way that creates a customer-centric talent experience and allows each client to build their own ready to work pool of talent.“
With any transformation, it takes patience and focus to get an organization on board with activating a new solution internally and deploying to their customers. This requires a very specific approach, says Debbie Brown, VP of sales and marketing at SASR. “We place a significant emphasis on genuinely knowing our customers. That means spending quality time getting to know their pains and creating customized solutions to help them deliver exceptional results,” she explains. “Through direct sourcing, we saw an opportunity to address talent shortages and seasonality variances. We can now proactively optimize our client’s talent assets with an improved system to fill jobs with qualified and trained talent while adhering to their compliance and safety protocols.”
Direct sourcing is transforming talent supply strategies. With clients expecting more from their staffing partners and talent desiring the better experiences, direct sourcing delivers on both sides.