At some point, every company will need to fill a staffing gap, whether it’s due to rapid company growth, short-term projects, seasonal demand, or a labor strike. To fill staffing gaps, companies look to short-term hiring.
If you’ve brought in temp workers before and the experience didn’t quite meet expectations. That doesn’t mean short-term hiring doesn’t work. It just means a few common pitfalls got in the way. The good news is they’re easy to spot (and even easier to fix) once you know what to look for.
Related Content: The Hidden Cost of Staffing Gaps
These five pitfalls show up often in short-term hiring. Understanding how to avoid them can help you streamline your process and build a more reliable temporary workforce.
Relying on the wrong job sourcing channels makes it a lot harder to hire the right people. General job posting boards or services that cross-post your job rely on a “more is better” mindset. Because they’re spreading the information so widely and not giving candidates parameters, oftentimes, the majority of applicants are unqualified for that position. This requires your hiring team to spend time sifting through hundreds of applications. And automated or AI-powered applicant tracking systems are often too overzealous in shuffling resumes to the “no” pile.
Relying on generic job boards and sites ends up costing you more time and money in the long run. While you might get a higher number of applicants, most of them end up being the wrong fit for the role.
To solve the wrong sourcing channel pitfall, the best thing you can do is utilize specialized networks, databases, and job sites that match your specific industry and desired roles. For manufacturing organizations, working with industrial- and manufacturing-specific staffing agencies like Strom lets you tap into an entire audience that’s otherwise unavailable to you. The result is that strong, industry-relevant workers are easier to attract and hire.
When companies are desperate to hire, they try to speed up the hiring process. Rushing the hiring process can make interviewees feel rushed, so they’re less likely to accept the offer, it can result in poor-quality hires, and it can even amplify costs long-term (Forbes).
When roles are filled too quickly, crucial vetting steps in the hiring process are often skipped. Poor candidate screening can result in:
While the position may be short-term, it doesn’t mean you should have low standards for your hire. Instead of rushing the processes, you need to be smarter about outsourcing the valuable time spent screening candidates.
One of the easiest ways to avoid hiring the wrong job candidate is to partner with a staffing firm that pre-vets candidates for technical skills, reliability, and cultural fit. With this step taken care of, the hiring process takes less time, and hired temp workers are a better match for your company.
At Strom, we have a large database of role-specific workers to pull from. Even if you need more niche and highly qualified roles, our wide pool of pre-screened candidates ensures we can find a match quickly. With a whole team at your disposal, the process can be expedited, and all the pre-screening steps will be thoroughly covered, so your workers will hit the ground running.
Another common pitfall is an inconsistent or incomplete onboarding experience. In the rush to get new candidates vetted and hired, some employers unintentionally speed up the process, neglecting to give the employee the proper tools to succeed.
Many temp workers often start with little context, direction, or structure. The result of this is greater confusion, slower output, and early turnover. In this situation, the employer, the new temp worker, and the current full-time employees all suffer from the situation. Oftentimes, current employees are left having to spend extra time fixing the mess rather than focusing on their work, and team dynamics as a whole suffer.
With the right onboarding plan, you can give a quick, consistent process to temp employees to cover everything from safety basics to chain of command questions to daily job expectations. That way, every new hire comes in with a clear understanding of what they are expected to do.
At Strom, we offer comprehensive recruiting , hiring, and onboarding services to ensure everything is covered. Our job is to make it as efficient as possible on our end, so hiring is easy, and you can focus on doing what you do best: keeping your company running well.
When temporary employees finish their assignments and leave without a debriefing , valuable knowledge goes with them. Capturing that information through documentation helps streamline future short-term roles.
After a short-term employee finishes a job, set up a process interview to gather valuable insight. Ask questions like:
Asking the right questions can help with future hires and fine-tune the onboarding process even more. Without the proper documentation, it’s easy for future hires to make the same mistakes, but getting answers can help you adapt your onboarding process. That way, key institutional knowledge doesn’t disappear with every short-term contract.
The last common pitfall companies make is working with the wrong staffing partner. Oftentimes, an employer will choose a general staffing agency because it’s the first option that comes up in search. While these agencies aren’t necessarily bad at what they do, they’re not the best fit for a company that can gain value from a particular niche of workers.
General staffing agencies are more likely to create mismatched placements that lead to higher amounts of turnover, leading to even more disruption and downtime for your company. Meanwhile, a company in your particular industry with exceptional knowledge in the field is much better at making the best placements for both you and your future temp workers.
To avoid working with the wrong staffing partner, ensure that your recruiting agency is within your particular field and has the experience necessary to find you qualified candidates.
Here at Strom, we’ve handled rapid hiring needs for some of the nation’s largest industrial and manufacturing companies. With a vast database of candidates at the ready, we can help you find a temporary workforce quickly and efficiently, keeping your downtime to a minimum. Our industry-specific experience is extensive, and we know how to get you the best job matches at efficient hiring speeds. Ready to get started with an expert industrial staffing firm?
Strom Engineering is a national staffing and recruitment agency, with a particular focus on manufacturing, assembly, and other trade positions. We match skilled candidates to temporary or project staffing positions. Learn more about how it works and check out our case studies for more information.