What is on-demand recruitment?
Hiring on demand is a flexible hiring model that allows companies to engage recruitment services as and when needed. Unlike traditional recruitment methods, which often involve long-term contracts or permanent in-house teams, on-demand recruitment provides access to recruitment expertise on a pay-as-you-go basis.
This model is particularly useful for handling sudden increases in hiring needs, specialized roles, or project-based requirements. It offers companies the agility to scale their workforce without the overheads of maintaining a full-time recruitment team.
The need for a flexible workforce
How can companies be expected to scale and disrupt their markets when the average time to fill an in-house role is 42 days? And if we look into more competitive industries and mission-critical functions the scenario is even worse. Engineering positions take an average of 62 days to fill.
In addition, in-house employees are less likely to stay with a company for the long term. For example, in the tech industry employee attrition rate is at an all-time high, with employees sticking around for less than 2 years on average. Most troubling of all is that even after all of that work, companies are not guaranteed an employee. According to a recent report 30% of hires leave tech firms within the first three months.
Even established tech giants, offering great compensation packages, are not immune to the high turnover rates. According to recent reports, median tenure is just one year at Amazon and 1.1 years at Google.
The delay in the hiring process is impacting productivity across all departments in organizations as teams struggle to fill out their ranks. Companies need the agility to respond to business challenges with an adequate workforce. On-demand recruitment is one solution to this challenge.
How does on-demand recruitment work?
On-demand recruitment typically involves a few key steps:
- Initial consultation: The company meets with the on-demand recruitment provider to discuss specific hiring needs, timelines, and expectations.
- Talent sourcing: The recruitment provider utilizes a variety of sourcing techniques, including job boards, social media, professional networks, and proprietary databases, to identify potential candidates.
- Screening and selection: Candidates are screened through initial interviews, skill assessments, and background checks to ensure they meet the job requirements.
- Presentation of candidates: Qualified candidates are presented to the company, usually along with detailed profiles and assessment results.
- Interview coordination: The recruitment provider assists in scheduling and coordinating interviews between the company and shortlisted candidates.
- Offer and onboarding: Once a candidate is selected, the recruitment provider may assist with offer negotiation and onboarding processes to ensure a smooth transition.
The benefits of on-demand recruitment
On-demand recruitment services offer the following benefits:
- Access to recruiters with experience and expertise: These recruiters have specialized knowledge and extensive experience in various industries. They can quickly understand the requirements of a role and the company culture, ensuring a better match between candidates and job openings.
- Higher reach through modern talent technology: Advanced technologies and platforms can widen the talent search. These include AI-driven sourcing tools, applicant tracking systems (ATS), and talent analytics software. They can identify and engage with passive candidates who may not be actively looking for new opportunities but possess the skills and experience needed, resulting in a broader and more diverse talent pool.
- Fast hiring of candidates: By utilizing a network of pre-vetted candidates and fast processes, on-demand recruitment providers can reduce the time-to-hire. This is useful for organizations facing urgent hiring needs or operating in fast-paced industries where delays in recruitment can lead to missed opportunities and lost productivity.
- Workforce insights and performance management: These providers often offer additional insights to help companies make informed decisions about their hiring strategies and workforce planning. By analyzing trends and performance metrics, organizations can identify areas for improvement, optimize their recruitment processes, and enhance overall workforce productivity..
Is freelancing the future of work?
A growing number of candidates are choosing freelancing over full-time employment, already making up over 33% of the American workforce (about 57 million). These are experienced and engaged professionals who are constantly honing their skill sets, as stated by Upwork CEO
Stephane Kasriel:
“Freelancers think more proactively about
market trends and refresh their skills more
often than traditional employees, helping to
advance our economy.”
Freelancers possess the skills, knowledge and motivation your team needs to execute faster and more effectively than they do today.
An on-demand source of talent ready to join your company and hit the ground running, with zero commitment expectations. And it takes days on average to find them, not weeks.
This takes away the traditional hurdles associated with adding to the company’s headcount, fast tracks the process of team building and allows for unparalleled flexibility and speed of execution. You can build a roster of team members you can turn to at the drop of a hat, according to business needs.
Switching to an on-demand approach
to fill talent gaps as needed
For all the money and time spent perfecting our corporate hiring practices with rigorous vetting, skill testing, panel interviews, and so on, it is still widely agreed upon that the best way to ensure a successful hire is to work on a project together and evaluate both the outcome and cultural fit. Hiring freelancers is the perfect compromise for this sort of trial run approach.
But it’s much more than a simple bridge to a full-time offer. It’s an incredible opportunity. Once you embrace such an approach and loosen up the hiring process, it becomes a true “pay by deliverables” model, allowing every part of the organization to scale up and scale out as needed.
It’s clear that the emergence of the freelance marketplace has changed the hiring process, and companies should adapt to that. In the coming year, companies should try out a new strategy for bringing talent on board: dating freelancers. Changing the strategy will allow team managers to make quick decisions about outsourcing tasks and assignments without going through the cumbersome efforts required to hire what you might consider a decent candidate. This will allow you to scale your organization much faster, deliver on more goals and be far more effective from an ROI perspective.
How to implement on-demand recruiting in your business
Here are some of the ways that companies can make the most of on-demand recruitment services.
Map out your on-demand recruitment needs
Before implementing on-demand recruiting, thoroughly analyze your current and future hiring needs. This involves examining your historical hiring data to identify trends and patterns in your workforce requirements. Consider factors such as business growth projections, new project timelines, and seasonal peaks in demand that could impact your staffing needs.
Additionally, assess which roles and skill sets are the most challenging to fill through traditional recruitment methods. Understanding these aspects allows you to pinpoint where on-demand recruitment can provide the most significant benefits.
Choose an on-demand recruitment partner
Look for partners who have demonstrated success in filling similar roles to those you require and have a deep understanding of your industry’s unique challenges. Evaluate their technology stack, including the tools and platforms they use for sourcing, screening, and managing candidates.
Additionally, consider their network reach and ability to tap into both active and passive candidate pools. It’s also essential to assess their flexibility and willingness to customize their services to fit your specific needs.
Integrate with the existing HR process
For on-demand recruitment to be effective, it must integrate with your existing HR processes. This means aligning the workflows of the on-demand provider with those of your internal HR team.
Start by establishing clear communication channels and protocols for information sharing. Regular check-ins and progress updates are vital to ensure that both teams remain synchronized and can address any issues promptly. Technology like integrated applicant tracking systems (ATS), can enhance this integration, enabling a faster process from candidate sourcing and screening to onboarding.
Define your objectives and expectations
Setting clear and measurable objectives is crucial for the success of your on-demand recruitment strategy. Begin by defining what you hope to achieve with this approach, whether it’s reducing time-to-hire, accessing specialized talent, or managing recruitment costs more effectively.
Communicate these goals clearly to your on-demand recruitment partner, ensuring they understand your performance metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). Establish mutual expectations regarding timelines, candidate quality, and communication protocols. This alignment helps create a collaborative relationship focused on achieving shared goals.
Monitoring and Evaluation
Implement a tracking system to continuously measure the effectiveness of your recruitment efforts against your predefined KPIs. Regularly review performance data, including metrics such as time-to-hire, candidate quality, and cost-per-hire. These insights will help you identify areas for improvement and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Additionally, gather feedback from hiring managers and candidates to gain a comprehensive understanding of the recruitment process from multiple perspectives. This qualitative data can provide insights into the candidate experience and the success of your on-demand recruitment partner’s efforts.
Fiverr Enterprise: An alternative to on-demand hiring agencies
As part of our robust Freelancer Management System, Fiverr Enterprise removes the stress of candidate sourcing, and finds expert, pre-vetted and business-ready freelancers, perfect for your job listing, and for your organizational context. With the help of our AI tool, or totally from scratch, create your job listing and post it on the platform, and within 48-72 hours, our hiring experts will present you with between 2-6 viable candidates, ready for you to narrow down the search.
If you need to move faster, we’ve pre-selected a list of talents from various, high-demand industries and fields, because we know you want and need the best in class. Our pre-selected talents are instantly available. Onboarding can be automated with a customized workflow that suits your organizational needs, and is totally compliant with the relevant regulatory requirements so you, and your new freelancer can hit the ground running.