It can be difficult today to find candidates who are a good fit for your open positions and your company culture, and the nationwide shortage in manufacturing labor isn’t making it any easier.
To top it off, status quo job board and staffing agency efforts no longer get the job done (pun intended. We explain why and share what you should do instead.
Job Boards: A Time-Consuming, Expensive Way to Identify Low-Quality Candidates
The biggest drawback of manually posting positions to job boards is that it’s time-consuming. Your team can spend hours posting a job listing to multiple different websites, only to have to spend hours more monitoring for applications and following up with candidates. Plus, you risk losing top talent when you rely on job boards because there’s no mechanism to immediately engage candidates and let them know you’re interested in them.
Job boards can be costly, too, and those costs are hard to predict or control. Some websites charge employers per post, while others charge per application. To gain visibility, employers often pay more for sponsored job advertisements which can add up quickly.
Job boards also tend to focus on quantity rather than quality. Most job boards don’t target manufacturing talent specifically, so your job postings are less likely to reach the right workers. And because anyone can apply through a job board, you’re bound to receive many applications from unqualified candidates that you’ll have to sift through manually, increasing your time-to-hire.
Staffing agencies must be a better approach, right? Not so fast.
Staffing Agencies: An Even More Expensive Way to Meet Short-Term Needs
Staffing agencies can be a useful source of temporary workers, especially for entry-level positions. But while they’re a good place to find warm bodies when you’re in a crunch to fill certain jobs, that doesn’t always translate well to identifying highly skilled employees who will stick around for the long term.
As with job boards, the first problem is that staffing agencies aren’t cheap. Most charge hourly rates equaling 25 to 100% of the hired employee’s hourly wages plus a fee for filling the position that averages 15 to 25% of the hired employee’s annual salary.
Then there’s the issue of knowledge. Staffing agencies tend to be generalists; they don’t specialize in manufacturing staffing, so they’re less likely to understand the skills your open jobs require or the machinery your workers need to operate. This makes it harder for them to vet candidates adequately and can leave you staring at a list of unqualified prospects.
Staffing agencies also aren’t specialists in your company or your culture, and they’ll never know your company as well as you do. That can cause the agency to misrepresent your employer brand or send you candidates not aligned with your company’s values, leading to interpersonal difficulties and, ultimately, higher turnover. Agencies are paid to fill a job—not to find a candidate who will grow with your company for years to come.
So, if job boards and staffing agencies aren’t the solution, what is?
A Better Way to Recruit Manufacturing Talent
Your team can stay on top of recruitment without relying on job boards or staffing agencies—as long as they’re empowered with the right tools.
FactoryFix is a manufacturing-specific recruitment automation platform and talent network that enables TA teams to identify qualified candidates who are a strong fit for your company’s open positions. What makes FactoryFix different?
First, we help spread the word about your open positions with our one-stop job-sourcing engine, starting with our network of over 800,000 manufacturing professionals. We’ll also automate posting to both general and manufacturing-specific job boards across the web as well as local boards.
Next, our TalentEngage tool will automatically send candidates a welcome message within minutes of their application submission, kick-starting candidate engagement and ensuring you don’t miss out on top talent. TalentEngage is powered by AI technology to screen candidates and stay in touch with them throughout the hiring process, keeping them invested in the opportunity (say buh-bye to candidate ghosting) without requiring your team to check in constantly.
With FactoryFix, you can source top-tier candidates with the skills you need who also fit your culture and keep them engaged throughout the process up to the point of hire—all at an affordable, predictable price.
Contact our team today to learn more.
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