For many small business owners, locating and recruiting key individuals for their organization is a tough job. Fortunately, there are many resources that are available to help small businesses. The use of employment agencies, or recruiting firms, is increasing due to the need by organizations to hire competent individuals to help put the organization on the fast track to success.
PERMANENT PLACEMENT SERVICESThere are many types of services offered by employment agencies. One of the services provided by employment agencies is the permanent placement service. The majority of the agencies have recruiting specialists in many areas. These areas include: administrative, technical, executive, financial, sales/marketing and medical placement. By working with recruiters within their specialty, businesses are assured that they are getting the most qualified candidates in their area of expertise.
BENEFITS OF THE SERVICE
There are many benefits to using a permanent placement employment agency. First, agencies can get qualified candidates in a relatively short amount of time. Second, most qualified candidates are usually not "hitting the pavement" to find themselves a job. Most can-not be reached through newspaper advertisements or by other means that most companies use to attract possible employees. Therefore, because of the benefits of reaching these qualified candidates in a short time frame, small businesses should utilize this service.
FEES AND GUARANTEES
Most employment agencies that have permanent placement services charge their fees to the employers. The fees are most commonly based on a percentage of the new hire's first year annual income.
For secretarial and office support positions the fee is around 15 percent. For all other positions, the average fee is 30 percent of the candidate's first year annual income.
The majority of employment agencies work on a contingency basis. This means that the client company only pays a fee if they hire a candidate submitted by the employment agency. It doesn't cost anything for a company to interview and screen the candidates submitted by the employment agency.
Most companies take a look at these candidates and compare them with what they can get on their own. If there is a significant difference in the quality and experience of the candidate, the costs are justified. The fees are only charged to the company if an offer is extended and accepted.
In addition, many employment agencies offer guarantees to back their placements. Most agencies offer a 30-day money-back guarantee as well as a six-month replacement guarantee. Ifthe employee quits or is fired for any reason, the employment agency will stand by their guarantees.
TEMPORARY PLACEMENT SERVICES
In addition to permanent placement, many firms offer temporary services. Temporary services are widely used because client companies pay the employment agency instead of paying the employee. Therefore, many costs such as unemployment, payroll taxes and benefits do not exist for the client company.
Temporary help is often needed, especially for small businesses, due to rapid growth, seasonal growth and covering for employees due to vacations or illnesses. When a company is experiencing rapid growth, a business owner or hiring officialshould not immediately hire a large amount of people. He/she should take the time and watch the growth patterns to make sure that the human resource need is going to be consistent. The worst thing that an owner could do would be to hire people because of a growth and then find out that it was just a short-term need. Then the owner is left with too many employees for the company's workload. Therefore, hiring temporaries during the rapid growth period is necessary to evaluate whether or not this growth is going to be long-term.
A second reason for using temporary services is seasonal growth. As stated previously, many growths that companies are seeing are due to seasonal growth. Therefore, hiring a temporary allows the business owner to accomplish the work without the necessary tasks of hiring additional employees.
Lastly, many organizations experience time when a significant part of their staff is not working due to vacations or illnesses. Using a temporary service is useful at this time also because one can get a temporary within a relatively short period of time and they are able to cover for any time frame necessary.
Because of the many services provided by employment agencies, both permanent placement and temporary placement, small businesses should utilize them for the benefit provided.
Sheri L. Fay is a placement specialist at the recruiting firm of Prince, Perelson and Associates in Salt Lake City.