As an entrepreneur or a business owner, you would come up across many challenges that you experience firsthand, but a majority of the challenges are encountered during the ‘scaling-up phase’. You have developed a Minimum Viable Product [MVP] of your idea, got a couple of customers for your product, and set up a Class-A core-team. But once you have to scale up your technical/marketing/sales team, you might need to go head-hunting searching for potential candidates who are a culture fit for your organization. There is always an option to hire people via references, but that approach may not be feasible in case you are planning to hire in large numbers.
In such a scenario, you have to setup a Human Resource [HR] department whose core expertise will be in screening candidates, shortlisting candidates, scheduling interviews, on-boarding employees, and retaining them. All these activities are easier said than done as the quality of shortlisted candidates would depend on the approach that is taken by the HR team. There is a cost associated in scheduling interviews and the costs can multiply if the interviewed candidate does not join the organization [even after he accepts the offer].
Instead of having an in-house HR team, it is recommended that you partner with a company that specializes in Human Resource Management and one which has provided their services to companies [of different sizes]. One such company that has specialization in human resource management, Recruitment Process Outsourcing [RPO], Leadership development, etc. is the ManpowerGroup. Unlike HR teams that are housed in-house, an HR partner like ManpowerGroup can play a vital role in various HR activities like shortlisting potential candidates, scheduling interviews, negotiating for salary, on-boarding employees, and more. The same role can also be performed by the in-house HR team, but the primary difference lies in the implementation & speed with which results are achieved.
HR partners like ManpowerGroup are not HR generalists, but they are experts in their domain. Since HR partners have worked with clients across different sectors, they have an immense amount of experience & expertise in recruitment and retention of employees. Since the HR partners work in tandem with the top management team of the client organization, they understand the culture of the organization and ensure that employees who are hired are ‘culture fit’. Such an approach also ensures that the HR team in the organization can focus on other important tasks like Employee Learning & Development [L&D], Employee retention, etc. The HR team, irrespective of the experience can learn from the consultants who are associated with the HR partner & learn useful traits from them.
There are so many traditional recruitment agencies who call themselves as HR Partners for Human Resource Management, but they may not have the level of expertise that is required for managing different functions in HR. It could be possible that the charges levied by them could be much below the industry standards, but you should make a conscious decision to avoid them. Human Resource is an important department & HR folks are the ones who are responsible for building a ‘best-in-class organization’.
It is always recommended that you partner with the best like ManpowerGroup by having at a long-term plan, rather than looking at short-term gains.