The Right Stuff: how to find the right people

The job of procurement isn’t always the easiest one to engage in. Sourcing the right member isn’t necessarily as easy as life should grant, and a complex employment marketplace means you’re often fighting not just to find the right staff, but to keep them around. Hiring consultants, contracts, and freelance experts may be the enlightened path to not only finding, but retaining staff, and this process may truly answer the call and question of how to find the right people once and for all.

Job vs Project

Modern employment resources tend to work off the idea of the role for the company, followed by the desired acquisition time. We need a contract project leader, and we need them for six months. A freelancer design must be hired, and we need them to fill a maternity position for 12 months. Role and desired time. Easy. Except for that, it isn’t always like that. Employment strategies differ from project to project, and only when they’re thought of as a project can the role truly transcend beyond what is initially thought to be required. The same positions as before appear differently when the project is considered as opposed to merely the role. A contact project leader is needed for a development expected to take six months but instead takes three, saving money. A freelance designer is hired for a 12-month maternity position, but is only needed on three projects; once those projects are over, the position still exists and funds have been saved overall. An approach to a project instead of a job could help keep costs down, improving ROI while hiring consultants, contractors, and freelancers, especially against bringing in full-time staff.

Experience over Qualifications

Knowing the time you want your next worker for is only one part of the dilemma. You also need to be able to trust they have “the right stuff” to succeed. Hiring from CV can take time, requiring an HR and procurement strategy that harks back to the old days of calling for references, checking projects, and ensuring the would-be staff member is up to scratch. Falsifying skills is not uncommon, and while an assumption can be made that it’s easier to check online, the reality is the falsehoods continue unabated. This affects that procurement dilemma and can leave HR with an employee that isn’t well-suited for the project or role. References on business-based social networking platforms can help, but they’re not the be-all, end-all. Rather, platforms that detail projects and offer testimonials from project managers might be a more suggested path, with an actual outcome able to be rendered, and expert employees uncovered without fear of failure found along the way.

Retaining Talent

Hiring consultants for projects can come with an expected caveat: when the project is over, the staff can move freely to another project at another company, possibly leaving you without when it comes to crunch time. Fortunately, finding a freelancer for specific projects is just as easy as sourcing them on a project-oriented platform, making retention less like employment strategies than it previously has been. Rather, retention is less about retaining staff, but rather retaining a source to uncover equally skilled experts and professionals able to get the job executed without fail.