With HR becoming more challenging and time-consuming for small employers, many have chosen to explore outsourcing solutions such as professional employer organizations (PEO). A PEO can help small and medium-sized businesses overcome a variety of HR challenges, including:
- Lackluster employee benefits
- Rising HR costs
- Employment law compliance
- Outdated HR technology
But these aren’t the only challenges a PEO can help solve. In fact, some PEOs can help their clients with one of the biggest issues facing employers of all sizes today – attracting and recruiting talent.
With recruiting (and retaining) talent more difficult than ever, employers can turn to their PEO to help enhance talent acquisition strategies and ultimately hire new employees. But how do PEO recruiting services work and how do they help small employers?
Here are some ways a PEO’s recruiting services can help clients overcome their recruiting headaches!
Crafting job descriptions
The importance of job descriptions in today’s market cannot be understated. If they do not contain enough information, candidates won’t apply. And worse, if they aren’t accurate or display misleading information, employers jeopardize damaging their candidate experience and employer brands.
Because smaller employer may not have the in-house resources and/or recruiting experience, they struggle to write job descriptions that result in job seekers hitting the apply button.
But a PEO and its recruiting team has the experience and expertise to create job descriptions that lead to higher application conversion rates. And not only will a PEO create job descriptions, they will also create job requisitions. That leads to example number 2.
Effectively advertise
Another common challenge smaller employers encounter is figuring out how and where to advertise open positions to attract the right kind of talent. There are many so many possible sources – from hundreds of online job boards to social media sites like LinkedIn and Glassdoor – that it can be confusing.
A PEO makes this process simple and easy for employers. A PEO’s recruiting team will ensure that jobs are placed in the best possible locations for each position. This opens up smaller businesses to more job candidates, helping to attract and ultimately hire the right person.
Access to an ATS
Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are one of the more important recruiting technologies around today. Even though there are several focused on the small and medium-sized market, they all take time to learn and the cost, though not substantial, may not make sense when you don’t hire many people each month.
But using a PEO’s recruiting services gives small businesses access to an ATS, improving the recruiting process and the candidate experience.
Source and qualify candidates
Finding the right candidates who could become new team members is difficult and time-consuming, making it a challenge for business owners who have to juggle numerous responsibilities.
A PEO can take on sourcing and qualifying candidates, screening them for fit as well as ensuring they meet the basic skills and experience to do the job. Instead of a busy business owner having to sort through dozens – or hundreds – of resumes, the PEO can do initial screening moving the candidates through the first steps of the recruiting process.
Once the employer selects the pre-qualified candidates they want to me, the PEO’s recruiting team can schedule interviews with the business owner and follow-up after, saving even more time for the client while making the recruiting process more efficient.
Positive candidate experience
Given the competition in the job market today, the candidate experience is more important than ever. Larger employers have entire recruiting teams and technology dedicated to providing job seekers with the best possible experience throughout the application and hiring processes.
A PEO can do the same for their clients, making it easy and convenient for a candidate to apply for a job and staying in touch with the candidate on behalf of the client throughout the hiring process.
Resources, guides, strategies, and tips
Not only can a PEO and its recruiting services provide employers with physical recruiting assistance, they can also provide clients with access to a wide-variety of recruiting-related materials that can help improve strategies and processes. These resources can include:
- How-to guides
- Hiring strategy ideas
- Educational materials
- Recruiting documents
- Offer letter and job requisition templates
- Compliance guidelines
- Access to experienced recruiting professionals
The resources provided by a PEO can help business leaders become more familiar with recruiting best-practices and the strategies that will yield the best results, along with the latest trends taking shape within talent acquisition.
This can help businesses, especially those with growth goals, prepare for future hiring needs and create effective recruiting strategies.
More than just benefits and payroll
It’s well known that professional employer organizations provide various HR solutions to employers that overcome challenges with healthcare, employee benefits, payroll, HR compliance, and more. But a PEO can also assist with recruiting-related troubles with the specialized services they offer.
And with recruiting growing more and more challenging, working with a PEO that offers these services can help small employers remain competitive with their much larger counterparts for top talent.