Your organization has no time to waste when filling contingent worker positions. The faster you can fill temporary positions with high-quality externally-sourced workers, the more competitive your business will be.
Typically, organizations turn to staffing agencies to fill these requirements and rightfully so. But as it becomes increasingly more difficult to fill open positions due to the workforce shortage (also known as the “Great Resignation”), businesses must also look for new innovative ways they can acquire talent.
To quickly bring in qualified candidates from existing talent pools, some companies are building direct sourcing strategies to augment their current contingent workforce staffing hiring processes.
What is Direct Sourcing, and is it Supported by VMS Software?
Direct sourcing, in a nutshell, is essentially a strategy in which businesses internally identify and hire suitable contingent candidates by building their own pool of freelance, consultants and temporary workers.
It’s a contingent hiring process that augments the traditional use of staffing agencies for contingent talent.
Direct sourcing is a method of hiring contingent talent with your own in-house hiring team. However, to minimize the risk of worker misclassification or co-employment in a direct sourcing program, workers should be payrolled through a third-party employer or record employer instead of directly on the organizations books.
With that in mind, in this blog we take a look at the top five methods in which a direct sourcing strategy can benefit your organization’s contingent workforce management strategy and help you hire contingent workers even in the face of a workforce shortage.
- Faster hiring cycles thanks to an engaged talent pool
Direct sourcing relies on your organization building a talent pool of workers that can be engaged in the future. These workers generally include referrals, past contingent workers, “silver medal candidates” (those who almost got a position with your company and just missed out) and retirees.
Since these workers already know your business, are engaged with your hiring managers and like your company culture, they can be hired into positions much faster than typical contingent workers. Direct sourcing helps you drive faster hiring cycles.
- Potential cost savings
While staffing agencies bring a range of advantages to your contingent workforce program, direct sourcing, when done right, is both cheaper and faster than traditional staffing agency services.
With a pool of already-engaged workers at your organization’s disposal, your business will be able to shorten the time it takes to fill temporary positions and reduce the costs associated with hiring contingent workers through a staffing agency. This can be an effective strategy when combined with your existing staffing agency processes.
- You can build strong relationships with external talent
The ability to attract and retain permanent employees has long been a workforce management goal, so why hasn’t that translated to the contingent workforce in recent years? With direct sourcing, your business can make that happen.
The ability to attract and repeatedly engage contingent talent through your own internal program can help you nurture stronger relationships with the top talent in your industry and beat your competitors to those workers. Become an “employer of choice” for contingent workers!
- A more seamless onboarding process
Onboarding is time-consuming and complex. Externally-sourced workers need to be up-to-speed with your business, but spending too long doing this can seriously impact the ROI you receive from those workers.
Direct sourcing results in a far more seamless onboarding process than other types of contingent workforce hiring. That’s because these workers are already familiar with your company, they’ve probably worked with you in the past and you already know everything you need to know about them. It won’t take long to onboard them in their positions and get them up to scratch for immediate results.
- You’ll gain more control over the hiring process
There’s no one that knows your workforce requirements better than you. Staffing agencies are great when you partner with the right provider, but, as with any outsourced vendor, there’s always risk.
With a direct sourcing strategy, you can gain greater control of a portion of your company’s contingent workforce program. This could potentially help your business bring in the candidates that fit your exact needs at any specific time.
Interested in learning more about direct sourcing and how building a strategy can help your business enhance its contingent workforce program? Contact Conexis VMS today. Our innovative vendor management system helps companies support their direct sourcing strategy.
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