If you wish to staff your office during the pandemic, but do not know where to begin, you need to first define hiring an employee versus recruiting staff. While these terms may be used interchangeably, they really are not the same thing.
Rules for staffing offices during Covid pandemic outbreaks, or employment-related slow-downs, depend heavily on whether a hiring manager understands what is entailed in hiring an employee or recruiting staff.
If you work as an employment professional and regularly partner with temporary and permanent staffing agencies, you will find that knowing how hiring and recruiting differ will help you make better staffing choices during Covid and afterwards.
When to Hire and When to Recruit
When it comes to recruiting or hiring, you have to consider the context of each process. The option you select will depend on –
- The timeline
- The expertise, or level of experience of the job candidate
- Finding the right person with the proper qualifications
The acquisition method you use to select employees is critical, as making the wrong choices can lead to poor employment decisions, excess amounts of wasted time, and the insubstantial use of capital.
Noting this fact, let’s first define hiring. This word often correlates with staffing employees on a temporary basis. Therefore, hiring represents an employment need that has to be fulfilled, and works as follows:
- Your company needs an employee to fulfill a specific job role
- The job is posted
- Candidates apply to the assignment
- The candidate is chosen
A Long-term Type of Hiring Strategy
It takes longer to recruit talent. Therefore, recruitment represents a long-term method of hiring skilled and educated workers. The process entails building and maintaining a pool of eligible job candidates. Hiring is not necessarily better than recruitment, nor is recruitment a better hiring strategy than simply employing workers.
The process for hiring usually begins by internally or externally advertising your employment needs. As candidates apply, the employment management team selects the best applicants from the hiring pool.
If your company is seeking candidates for lower level or temporary jobs, using a hiring process, by itself, will work out well. If a job does not require specialized skills, more candidates will naturally apply for the role. In addition, especially, when it comes hiring a temporary staff, the interview process is far less complex.
In addition, if a temporary hire or lower-level job candidate does not work out, it is easier to find a new candidate to replace the employee. You will experience less risky stakes when you depend on a temporary staffing agency for staffing offices during Covid pandemic unemployment periods.
If you are seeking managerial candidates, you will be better served by establishing a recruiting pool of eligible job candidates. Recruitment entails using people who have already been vetted or pre-screened, who may not necessarily be seeking a new position.