How to hire the right team for right now - Viewpoint - careers advice blog Viewpoint careers advice blog

How to hire the right team for right now - Viewpoint - careers advice blog For any company there can sometimes be a  perennial mismatch between the talent they have and the talent they need to push their business forwards. So how do we address this talent mismatch? For many companies the answer is temporary recruitment: hiring candidates on fixed term contracts, often through staffing agencies, to respond to demands as they arise without any long-term commitment.  Identifying exactly when you need to hire temp talent and when you should make use of your existing resource can be complicated. Here are some tips on making that judgement call, ensuring that you have the right team for right now. 1. Establish temp recruitment as a fixed part of your staffing strategy For example, if you work for a company where you are always pitching for new business, you can make the decision that x per cent of your workforce will always be temporary employees. This way you don’t commit any resource to a project before it has been won and can more easily shift resource around as demands from different projects arise. At Hays we worked with a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) client who had won a contract with an international telecoms company that needed them to provide a multi-lingual 24/7 support team based out of Central Europe. They wanted to run a pilot for a few months before committing fully and so the candidates our client hired were all on a ‘temp to perm’ basis. In other words, they would only become permanent employees if the pilot was successful (luckily it was). The candidates were happy to take this offer as they still got great experience with a big brand, plus there was the possibility of a perm contract if they performed and the project was a success. The client was safe in the knowledge that if they didn’t win the project they would be able to let the temps go, as they were contracted to Hays and not them, or move them on to another on-going project. Therefore, by developing a temp staffing strategy, you will always have the option of using this temp talent as and when you need it. 2. Plan, plan and plan some more When planning at the start of your financial year, you should have visibility of the key upcoming internal projects, and the resources needed to complete them. Anticipate when your workload will peak or trough at certain times of year, based on previous trends. Identify early where there will likely be a strain on resource and secure budget for temp hires for a particular project or time period in advance. A large Fast Moving Consumer Goods company we worked with decided to move all their finance processes (e.g. Accounts Payable, General Ledger etc.) from multiple countries to one location. This required additional specialists who would manage the project. This was of course a temporary requirement for the client as once the project was completed the Transition Managers they hired wouldn’t be needed anymore. The client therefore asked us to set up the team comprising of international specialists to work on the project, invoice them on a monthly basis for work performed and then take them back once the project was over. They determined exactly who they would require and when â€" so benefited from not paying for anything they didn’t need. Smart planning in action! 3. Consider the project management triangle Using temporary employees is a great way to boost the resource aspect of any project, thereby either increasing the scope of what you need to do or reducing the time needed to do it. Every task is unique with different priorities, but many companies are realising the benefits of using temps for their one-off projects. An engineering design client of ours had won a new project with an automotive company in Germany. To complete it within the set deadlines, they would need to quickly find and recruit 15 Junior CAD/CAM engineers to help with the more day-to-day work. Junior engineers are interested in doing these short projects as they can get valuable experience and if successful they can apply for permanent positions with either the engineering company or the automotive company themselves. This arrangement is mutually beneficial, as the client doesn’t want to be paying for 15 people on a perm basis when there isn’t a project for them to work on. In each of the above cases, when meeting the deadline was a priority and reducing the scope wasn’t an option, the client was able to successfully complete the project by making use of temp resource â€" with the added benefit of not being burdened with extensive notice periods. All it takes is smart planning based on reflection and analysis. To find out more on temporary recruitment solutions, speak to one of our local recruitment experts in your market. Hopefully these tips will help you to identify when you need to make temp hires to accomplish your business objectives. But after you’ve decided you need a temp, you have to go out and actually find them. And so the subject of my next blog will be on how to attract a temporary worker. Until next time. Hopefully you found this blog interesting. Here are some other IT articles which you also might enjoy: Why the ‘job for life’ mentality no longer exists in it Digitally transform your business with these soft skills Could you help reduce the digital skills deficit? Top 10 emerging coding trends you need to know about How high tech cities are boosting productivity and attracting talent Share this blog