Navigating Disruptions and Crafting an Agile Staffing Approach
We’re back with Part 2 of the conversation with Stacey Cleary, VP of Recruiting and Talent Acquisition, Kristie DeLoreto, SVP for Client Relations, and Jason Dumois, SVP of Strategic Partnerships. If you missed the first part, you can access it here.
Read on to learn more about staffing, talent, and strategies to embrace during this period of economic uncertainty. Further, learn how to scale up or down based on your needs and continue to move forward with your Learning and Development initiatives without breaking the bank!
Culture is a huge factor for all organizations. How can your staffing partner understand your culture well enough, and how can they use it to find candidates who are a great cultural fit?
Kristie: The partner should take time to understand the company over conversations. It also helps for the partner to connect directly with the team looking for a resource. A lot will be evident with clear, transparent communication.
For example, the team lead can sometimes be really specific about work timings, expectations from the resource, how they expect the resource to collaborate with the in-house team, etc. It’s important to pay attention and understand their thought process. Listening to the tone of expectations can go a long way in finding the right candidate for the team!
And, if after placement, you realize it’s not a good fit, the partner should be flexible to replace the resource seamlessly. Give a comfortable time frame to acclimatize, but if there are jarring red flags, your staffing partner must be able to offset that challenge.
What are some of the touchpoints while vetting a candidate?
Kristie: As a company, we take a lot of time with any application that comes our way. If it's somebody new we are adding to our pool, we take time to understand their strengths, skill set, proficiency, comfort level, and more. As mentioned earlier, we sometimes give them a sample project, too. We go through an airtight screening process to understand their strengths and weaknesses. It really strengthens our endeavor to place them with a client looking for this exact profile—no mismatches!
As an experienced talent partner to leading brands, does ELB Learning engage with clients after the resource has been placed?
Stacey: Checking in with our clients is very sacred! We believe this is how we can improve in always getting a placement right. Finding the expectations and delivering on them.
Periodic feedback: after a day, after a couple of days, a week, and beyond, we take time to speak with the client and the resource and ensure both are happy! Are goals met? Is the progress satisfactory? These are great ways to establish trust and reliability.
Kristie: And it’s not only the client; we go the extra mile to make sure our contractor is happy doing the job assigned. We need our contractors to feel motivated, recognized, and thriving in this new environment.
Jason: At the end of the day, all stakeholders must be happy with the solution. The client, the contractor, and us as a partner in solving L&D challenges. It needs to be a win-win-win!
For organizations new to the concept of augmenting their in-house team, what is a comfortable budget to get started with staff augmentation?
Kristie: The best feature of staff augmentation is the budgetary control it provides organizations. You can define your expectations and limitations, and your staffing partner must be able to deliver a resourceful contractor within this range.
Contract resources provide tremendous ROI, as companies can onboard quickly without additional employment costs. Time to productivity and proficiency is fractional, as compared to an FTE. Organizations also have the flexibility to renew or scale down based on needs and whether it suits their budgets.
At ELB Learning, we offer competitive pricing and make it work for all stakeholders. Pricing is all based on their budgets and not rate cards!
Learn more about staff augmentation services and the talents we can help you source.
