Despite having tightened spending during the height of the recession, many companies in Fairfield County are now turning to staffing firms to fill positions.
Karen Eidelman, branch manager of Manpower, a global staffing and hiring franchise, said business has been going well because the job market is ripe and as the economy is recovering, companies want to hire.
However, she said, companies are now taking longer to decide who to hire.
“Business is very cyclical,” Eidelman said. “When the economy tanks, we slow down because people aren”™t hiring, so people don”™t use our services. As hiring improves, and as the economy improves, businesses start to look to us to restaff.”
Eidelman”™s branch serves Westchester, Rockland and Fairfield counties as well as northern New Jersey markets. Her firm has selected candidates to fill a range of job openings from administrative assistants and human resources managers to construction workers and retail workers.
She found that the most requested jobs are in manufacturing and those requiring experience in manual labor. The firm places candidates in both temporary and permanent positions.
“A client will call Manpower and say, ”˜I need a file clerk for three weeks,”™” Eidelman said. “We get all the information that the company needs, and we select Manpower associates to go through the screening process with existing candidates in our database. Once we make a match we send over the recommendations, and if that company hires our candidate, then we charge the client for using our services. Sometimes, clients will decide to go from using a candidate as a temp to a full-time hire. That”™s a conversion.”
Todd Capute, owner of Express Employment Professionals, a company focused on temporary job placement, human resources and consulting, said he is also noticing more businesses are using his firm”™s services ”” but it”™s taking longer for companies to make a hiring decision. Sometimes, companies request that the firm work with very specific parameters and job descriptions that make it more challenging to find a candidate to fit the bill.
“We”™re getting job orders now that are very narrow and specific,” Capute said. “The challenge is to fill those niche positions across all industries. Companies have adopted this mentality of making jobs more specific and becoming picky about who they hire. It”™s taking longer for them to make decisions because they”™ll go through a round of interviews and just wait.
Capute said his business sees the most common job openings in Fairfield County are in accounting and bookkeeping. He said there”™s also a fairly high demand for experienced drivers with a commercial driver”™s license. Most companies that reach out to Capute”™s firm aren”™t looking to create a human resources department. They just need a quick reference from a consultant to help them find the most qualified candidates to fill their job openings.
Staffing firms by nature must quickly and efficiently respond to clients”™ needs. Some days they may need to recruit administrators, while other days they may need a few temporary hires that can help move a few boxes, Eidelman said.
“There are thousands and thousands of job seekers that come to us,” Eidelman said. “We want to select the person who has key skills and is going to market them to our clients.”
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