Internal HR Reasserts Control Over Recruiting Using This Innovative Profiling Strategy

When VMS and MSP solutions were new and there was not yet decades of data to harness in pursuit of efficiencies in sourcing, recruiting and bill rates, almost all workforce management practices relied heavily on staffing suppliers for recruitment. Those organizations deploying enterprise software and/or MSP services for staffing essentially outsourced the recruitment of temporary labor to third party providers. This freed HR practitioners to focus their efforts on the full time workforce; contingents playing only a junior role in the overall workforce composition. Today, with nearly 25 years’ worth of data and experience, HR departments are trending towards re-exerting control over the sourcing, and they’re using candidate profiling to avoid costly redundancies of effort. This profiling practice is saving those who use it, serious money on workforce management activity. Here’s how.

Whether recruiting for full time or contract positions – internally or through a third party – HR departments are able to capture all the candidate information they collect via their ATS tools or online career portals. This information is compiled in a database and during interviews, candidates are questioned about whether they prefer full time work or contract work. This preference is also logged in the database. Candidates can be sourced from internally for contractor positions and engaged through an employer of record arrangement. This permits them to work in temporary capacities before a decision is made to transition them (or not) into full time roles.

At the same time, those who identify as “not interested in full time positions” or “preferring contract work” may be flagged as such in the database and called when there are positions such as those on projects where only contract workers will be needed for a fixed duration.  Using their own internal database of profiled candidates, an HR organization can effectively avoid paying costs associated with higher turnover and markups on high supply roles like clerical, admin, light industrial, etc.

Today, highly specialized, executive/professional roles are being adopted on a contract basis with much greater regularity than in past years. The practice of profiling for internal recruitment of common skill roles helps minimize costs in areas where sourcing is more formulaic, conserving spend for the higher markups associated with more specialized roles. Why pay any markup on easy to fill positions?

Making this practice even easier is the emergence of EOR solutions driven by concerns over compliance with Obamacare mandates and the complicated regulatory burden this entails. Add to this, the increasing portability of benefits like portable 401(k) plans and other EOR-provided benefits and it makes even more sense to return some recruitment to in-house HR control.

Populating the internal database is often achieved by adding all the candidates that submit for open positions; particularly those who made the “short list” but were beat out for past positions by the persons ultimately hired into those roles. These candidates are often very viable and an excellent pool of candidates can be assembled in this way. The practice does not add any cost to recruitment. A simple survey may be administered to all applicants with respect to their preference – full time or contract. Resumes can also be added to the database from a company’s applicant tracking system or even from those previously employed as contractors through the EOR.

Once a new position becomes available – full time or contract – internal HR can offer the position to a candidate who is a known quantity and whose preference will align with the position. No more turnover due to classification that runs counter to the candidates’ preferences.

For more elaboration on how to implement a strategy like this within the contours of your existing workforce management program, contact your nextSource representative today.