There are many ways that you can structure a staffing agency. The goal is to manage your resources to profitably place qualified candidates with your clients. Your processes and employee structure impact how well you achieve that goal. Specialization of roles can help improve your agency’s performance. In this 3-part series, we’ll discuss the staffing process, staffing agency structures, and best practices.
Process Review
It may be challenging to conduct a process review, especially if you’re firing on all cylinders and you feel like your firm is doing everything it can to keep things moving. But the benefits far outweigh the cons. Process reviews highlight bottlenecks, shine a spotlight on where batons are getting dropped and provide an improved understanding of each moving part in your firm. Before conducting a process review, make sure to review our articles on the staffing process and how to organize a staffing agency.
Task Separation
Once you’ve reviewed the entire process, you can start separating and categorizing tasks. Base this categorization on what point in the process the task occurs and the skills required to complete them. Split the process into mutually exclusive yet collectively exhaustive chunks and distribute those across separate roles.
For example, firms that operate a recruiter and sourcer model have broken the recruitment process down to first principles and re-built it into two separate roles. Anecdotally, these firms enjoy higher productivity levels, revenue, and profits than agencies that combine the sourcer and recruiter roles.
Role specialization
In our experience, the firms with the highest degree of role specialization also have the highest level of success. While our evidence is anecdotal, it should be clear that this follows the economic idea of specialization of labor and it will hold true.
Our recommendation is to explore this concept with experimentation and to apply it to all parts of the recruitment process.
Take a leaf out of the SAAS sales playbook and split your sales roles into sales development representatives and closers.
Look at creating a contractor care role focused on engaging your contractors throughout their contract, catching any issues before they become showstoppers, and transforming them into a measurable source of referrals and revenue.
Experiment and learn, test theories, and improve your bottom line.
Check out our other articles to discover how technology and process improvement can help you build a more profitable staffing agency.
