The Best Hiring Method and Recruitment Process for Skilled Workers

Factory worker using electric grinder in metal industry.

The advantages of external sources of recruitment can greatly increase your ability to find and hire top skilled talent when you need it. In fact, you may be losing money and productivity by not changing your recruitment process.

Are you a skilled labor employee in need of skilled workers?

Do you have a tough time finding and hiring the right people?

Have you considered external advertising advantages?

There are pros and cons of internal and external recruiting, but many skilled labor employers have struggled to find workers using only internal recruitment and HR hiring methods. If you want to find high-quality workers when you need them, it may be time to consider external recruitment processes.

In this article, we’re diving into the world of skilled labor recruitment and selection processes. We’ll be sharing information about why external staffing and recruiting agencies may be the best hiring method for trade labor.

Keep reading to get an answer to, “What are the benefits of external recruitment?”

Internal vs. External Sources of Recruitment

There are two main ways to find employees: an internal or external recruitment process.

Here’s a quick rundown of what each of these employee selection processes involves.

Internal Recruitment Processes

Internal recruitment processes involve a company’s HR team handling the entire process, from finding and interviewing candidates to hiring and onboarding them. 

One benefit to a company HR process is that it provides you with a lot of control over the hiring process. It allows you to choose: 

  • Where to post job ads
  • What’s included in your job postings
  • What to look for in applicant resumes
  • How to handle and conduct the interviews
  • Which skills/talents are most essential

However, an internal HR recruitment process can often fall short when it comes to consistently hiring top talent. Whether it’s a lack of hiring experience or not having access to a large number of candidates, internal processes aren’t sufficient to fill all of a skilled labor employer’s job vacancies.

What skilled labor employers need is a recruitment and selection process that allows them to find and hire workers every time the need arises. They need some outside help.

External Recruitment Processes

In addition to internal recruitment, there are also external recruitment processes employers can utilize.

External recruitment processes involve companies partnering with recruiters or agencies that can help with the recruiting process. An external recruiter’s goal is to relieve some of the hiring pressure by: 

  • Understanding the company’s needs
  • Finding and vetting candidates for companies 
  • Providing the company with quality hires for open positions

In tandem with a  company’s internal hiring team, an external recruitment partnership can help bolster a company’s ability to hire quickly and effectively.

However, external recruiting practices aren’t widely used in the skilled labor space yet. Some employers don’t think highly of recruiters, usually from a bad past experience with a poor recruiter. Others are simply afraid of changing their hiring practices—even though current approaches aren’t working to find and hire quality workers.

We believe that skilled labor is available and that a skilled staffing approach is the answer to meeting employers’ needs

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The Advantages of External Sources of Recruitment

Partnering with a skilled labor recruiting agency as an external recruitment source can go a long way in meeting your staffing needs.

If you already have an internal HR hiring process, utilizing an external recruiting agency is a great way to supplement your current recruitment and selection processes.

Or, perhaps you’re completely unsure what hiring new skilled workers looks like. Then, this is the perfect opportunity to start thinking through the best hiring method and the pros of working with a recruiter.

Here are four pros of working with an external labor recruiter that also help answer the question, “What are the benefits of external recruitment?”

1. Takes Pressure Off You and Your HR Team

First, partnering with a staffing agency can relieve the hiring stress you or your HR team may feel.

You need to find and hire workers to fill vacancies and keep production high. But let’s face it, finding and hiring quality candidates can be a long, tiring process, and the constant pressure to recruit new employees can be draining.

Fortunately, that’s a recruiting agency’s main job—to handle the entirety of the recruitment process. The recruiter works tirelessly to find, interview, and deliver high-quality candidates to you, so all you need to do is which of the recruiter’s applicants you think is best. The pressure of recruiting is on the recruiter’s shoulders instead of yours.  

2. Saves You Time and Money

In tandem with relieving stress and pressure, working with an experienced recruiter can also decrease the time and money you spend on recruiting.

Save Time

It can take weeks or even months to find and hire the right employees. You or your HR time may spend countless hours posting job ads, combing through resumes, and holding interviews. Sometimes all this work doesn’t even lead to high-quality candidates. But you need to hire employees, and that requires time.

Working with a skilled labor staffing agency allows you to let the recruiter spend hours working through the hiring process. After all, it’s their primary role! 

While the recruiter works tirelessly to find, vet, and interview candidates, you and your HR team can shift your time and focus to other company needs, like training or upskilling current employees.

Save Money

The cost of a bad hire is high, so saving money on hiring comes down to hiring the right people the first time.

Did you know that the average cost per hire for an organization is $4,129

Now, think about if you’re constantly having to hire employees, let them go, and hire again. The cost of hiring, onboarding, and training can add up quickly.

Additionally, a bad hire can cost you money if:

  • They’re a safety risk due to lack of experience or an unwillingness to follow protocols
  • They don’t show up to work on time or at all (ghosting)
  • They negatively impact other workers or the company culture

The answer to avoiding bad hires is to find the right people from the beginning.

A good labor recruiter can help decrease the risk of a bad hire by taking the time to gate and vet candidates properly. They can use a rigorous selection process to ensure you only receive high-quality, experienced candidates that add value to your company. 

3. Provides a Larger Pool of Candidates

Another one of the advantages of external sources of recruitment is that it provides you with a larger pool of candidates.

Often, internal HR teams can’t cast a wide net that’s highly specific to skilled labor needs. They can utilize online job sites or attend job fairs, but these are usually insufficient to handle the high volume needs of employers.  

On the other hand, skilled labor recruiting agencies specialize in trade recruiting and have extensive networks of potential workers. They can use these networks to start with a large number of candidates and whittle them down to a select few that fit your needs. This way, you can count on receiving candidates that can fill your positions and add value immediately.

Supplementing your internal efforts with an external recruitment process can help you access a whole new level of qualified candidates.

4. Increases the Likelihood of Finding the Right Workers

Piggybacking on number three, many potential candidates means a higher likelihood of finding the right employee—finding top talent quickly is essential to filling open positions and keeping production high.

The best skilled labor recruiters can use their networks in tandem with a selection process that delivers quality candidates at a high rate.

The right workers (as briefly mentioned in number two above) can have a huge, positive impact on your workplace. Because they can integrate more quickly into your company, they’ll:

  • Increase your overall productivity 
  • Help you grow your business 
  • Elevate company culture 
  • Boost the morale of other employees

Skilled labor employers suffer from:

  1. Not having enough workers 
  2. Not having the right employees 

A skilled labor recruiting agency can help overcome these hurdles and get you the workers you need when you need them.

A Skilled Labor Selection Process That Actually Works

There’s a skilled labor shortage that’s negatively affecting employers and industries all over the country. To meet the need for workers, companies can implement internal or external recruiting practices.

Internal recruiting involves a company’s HR department handling the entirety of the hiring process. An HR team allows for control over the recruitment process, putting all the power of who to hire in your hands. 

But most internal HR hiring teams can’t keep up with their employers’ hiring needs.

External recruiting agencies can provide some added relief to a company and its hiring process. They can supplement your internal process to help fill vacant positions. The advantages of external sources of recruitment include:

  • Relieving you and your HR team of hiring pressures
  • Saving you time and money
  • Providing a larger pool of candidates
  • Increasing the likelihood of finding and hiring the right workers

If you’re a skilled labor employer looking for hires and have a desire to reap the benefits above, it’s time to reach out to an experienced trade staffing agency.

At Skillwork, we specialize in finding the right hire the first time. Using our large pool of qualified candidates and our proprietary 8-step recruiting process, we can find the workers that meet your specific needs nearly 100% of the time. We also take a unique travel staffing approach that allows our workers to travel to jobs anywhere in the country—geographic location is no longer a hindrance to hiring.

Schedule an obligation-free consultation to see how you can start meeting all your staffing needs today!

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