Businesses, especially those that launch new products are constantly chasing after the next customer. However, the fact that they are also constantly chasing after their next top employee rarely gets as much attention. Too many businesses limit their focus to building a strong corporate brand exclusively. In so doing, they often neglect to work on building a strong employer brand.
A strong corporate brand is what attracts customers to your product. Similarly, a strong employer brand attracts top-quality talent to your business. This is especially true when you’re recruiting for technical positions, such as product design, mechanical, electrical, or even aerospace engineers via direct hire.
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Why Is It So Important to Source the Best Talent?
Remember that while customers generate revenue for continuity, it’s employees that drive an organization in terms of innovation, growth, and competition. Simply put, the better employees you hire, the more chances your brand has of succeeding in rapidly changing environments.
There is a reason why brands like Google and Facebook reached the pinnacles of their industry. Yes, they had unique, game-changing products. But they also made every effort to hire the best talent on their teams. In essence, these brands hold a lofty position in the industry based on the dedication, skill, and expertise of their workers.
How Strong Employer Brands Attract Top Technical Talent
How did brands like Google, Facebook, GitHub, and Twitter get the best talent to join their teams? The answer is simple. They worked on projecting a strong employer brand, even when they were fairly new. Many of the biggest companies that top professionals aim to work in became such desirable employers as a result of their efforts to build an employer brand that attracts exactly the type of talent they need.
In doing so, they started a self-perpetuating cycle. On one hand, they built up an employer brand to attract top-tier talent. Once hired, the skills and expertise this talent brought to the workplace added value, encouraging innovation, and helping them create winning products. This, in turn, propelled these brands to greater heights, further strengthening their employer brand.
A stronger employer brand then attracted even better talent, and so the cycle continues. These brands grow as a direct result of the quality of talent they have in their workforce. As time goes on, their brands grow stronger, and they keep attracting the very best talent available.
Sourcing Top Technical Engineering Talent for Your Brand
Unfortunately, you may not always have the time to work on creating an employer brand from the outset. Business leaders often have different ideas of urgency than recruiting managers. That means you may have been more interested in rolling out a new product before focusing on hiring.
Of course, the lack of quality talent means you will ultimately hit a brick wall. The lack of talent will limit how effective your product design and rollout is. This is exactly why brands need to pay just as much attention to their talent acquisition strategy as to their customer acquisition strategy.
The first step to success is a hiring strategy. What are your most pressing talent gaps? Do you need a product design engineer to push forward your lagging product development? Is there a need for a quality assurance engineer to ensure your product adheres to internal and regulatory standards? Do you require a mechanical engineer to help your product manufacturing proceed smoothly and efficiently? These questions will govern what shape your long-term hiring strategy takes.
Why Direct Hiring May Be a Smart Option
Of course, the hiring process in itself is a complex series of events, with very little margin for error. One bad hire can be a disaster for your entire business venture. That’s not to mention most smaller businesses have constraints when it comes to maintaining in-house recruiters. As a result, most brands tend to opt for direct hiring services from a reputable staffing agency like CGT Staffing.
In simple terms, direct hire is when you acquire talent that immediately becomes part of your permanent workforce. Direct hire employees are entitled to the same benefits, compensation, and time off as the rest of your permanent employees. When you work with an agency, the agency handles the recruitment process for you, but the employee lands on your payroll instead of the agency’s, unlike in contract, contract-to-hire, or temp staffing. There are several reasons to choose a staffing partner for your direct hiring needs when it comes to technical roles like engineering. These include the following:
In-Depth Knowledge of Technical Roles
When you work with professional staffing agencies with extensive experience in filling technical positions, the biggest advantage is quite clear. Professional technical recruiters usually have a deep understanding of technical roles, and what is expected/required from an employee filling that role. When direct hiring engineering talent, these recruiters do a great job of communicating the role and responsibilities that come with it. This allows them to deliver candidates that have the skill level and expertise you are looking for.
Motivated To Deliver Candidates
In most cases, professional recruiters have their commissions and bonuses tied in with successful placements. That means their success is linked to yours. In other words, professional recruiters are very motivated to find and deliver the right candidate the first time around. Remember, an unsuccessful placement, such as one where the employee is unsuitable or quits after a short while, reflects poorly on the agency’s own brand. This keeps professional recruiters on their toes, always doing their best to source, screen, and deliver the best possible candidates for an engineering direct hire.
Access to A Bigger Talent Pool
In-house recruiters tend to source talent from whatever is available locally. Professional recruitment agencies usually have access to a much larger talent pool, without the added burden of hiring bias. This is something they leverage to find the perfect candidate for your business. In engineering staffing, this means they dig deep into a diverse pool of nationally available engineering talent to find candidates that add value to their role and to the workplace.
Advocacy for Your Employer Brand
Never underestimate how closely active and passive candidates work with staffing firms. These firms tend to have hundreds, if not thousands, of potential candidates that they are frequently in touch with. This puts them in a unique position to advocate your employer brand. In other words, your staffing partner can pitch you as a desirable employer to a large number of potential candidates.
Even if you’re only going to select a single candidate for a role, direct hiring through an agency means the message is received by a larger number. You’ll be surprised how far word-of-mouth can get you in terms of attracting talent.
Save Time and Money
Finally, and most importantly, working with a professional recruitment agency for direct hires saves businesses considerably in terms of time and money. Successful hiring can be challenging at the best of times. When recruiting for speciality engineering roles, it becomes even more difficult. You will need to hire in-house recruiters with deep industry knowledge.
It goes without saying that you’ll also need to maintain the entire hiring function in-house. If you’re already strictly apportioning funds to different business aspects, hiring is probably way down on your list. A staffing firm, however, takes on the entire burden for you. From sourcing to screening to interviewing, your only concern will be paying the firm for their services. They handle all the grunt work, making direct hires not just easier, but also cost-effective.
