For many companies, the hiring process is arduous and expensive. First, a role has to be designed and advertised on job boards and other aggregators. Then, someone will have to slog through all the applications or use software to do so. However, even if the process can be sped up with the use of software that will scan applications for certain keywords, there’s no indication that that leads to overwhelmingly better hiring decisions.

Once the applications have all been reviewed, between one and three rounds of interviews will have to take place, which could occupy the daily schedules of senior management and other department heads for weeks on end.

Not only does this take up lots of time and waste money for the hiring company, but it will also force applicants to sit around and wait for word back, making the frustrating process of looking for work even more difficult.

Luckily, working with a creative staffing agency to outsource your hiring process can save tons of time and money. Agencies like icreatives have years of specialized practice with filling roles in art departments and we have a wide pool of referrals and existing talent that we can tap into to fill open jobs.

Outsourcing has tons of advantages, not the least of which is that it’s much more effective. Read on to find out how your company can cut costs and get the best creative talent on board much faster by outsourcing to a creative staffing agency.

The Traditional Recruiting Process

Recruiters have one main goal, which is to find the best talent. But that can mean many different things depending on the specific job duties and the goals of the business itself. Some people excel in startup companies with less traditional structures where they’re assigned various responsibilities and can think more outside the box, while others need the more well-defined roles of larger companies, for example.

In any case, most recruiters rely on similar tools to advertise new roles and source applicants. Online job boards have become some of the most frequently-used places to post job announcements but some of the biggest companies rarely use them. For these larger companies, they either use staffing agencies, insource their talent, or have a large enough referral pool to find willing applicants when they need them.

What is Outsourcing?

Although it got a bad reputation when it first became trendy, there are some types of outsourcing that reduce costs in the long run. Many large manufacturing jobs were offshored in the last decades, which is a specific type of outsourcing to foreign countries where taxes, materials, or wages are less costly for a company.

Outsourcing can also be done to businesses or a staffing agency in the same country, which will make it easier for people to stay more or less in the same loop because there won’t be such a severe time difference. When it comes to creative talent, remote work is becoming more and more popular, so outsourcing recruiting can make things even easier.

Members of a Recruiting Team

Although hiring managers are usually the most well-known member of the recruiting team, there are several other positions that are typically included. Sharing the load among several or many people will help everyone stay fresh. It can also help eliminate unintentional bias in the hiring process.

Here are a few of the most important member of a typical recruiting team:

• Sourcers
  

A sourcer is really important during the initial stages of the hiring process. They’re main responsibility is mapping a talent pool so the recruiters and other members of the team know where to find applications when there’s a job opening.

Part of this mapping is similar to the personas created by UX/UI designers. However, many sourcers swear by the telephone and stealth research as the most important tools for finding real-life people to apply for a position. Sourcers may also use short phone conversations to screen potential applicants and engage passive candidates.

• Recruiters
  

After the sourcer provides a list of screened callers, recruiters step in to manage the rest. They speak with the hiring manager to identify the best candidates and may or may not participate in candidate interviews depending on how the hiring department is set up.

Recruiters also help close with new hires and hold salary negotiations. They’re one of the most versatile positions on the hiring team and might take on many more responsibilities or help the hiring manager more in some cases.

• Hiring Managers
  

The person in charge of all the final decision-making for new hires is called the hiring manager. They could be the head of the department that needs the new employee or they could also be a dedicated manager over all the company’s hiring.

Human Resources backs up the hiring manager and the recruiter(s) report directly to them. Building long-term relationships with employees and making sure new talent stays happy starts with their initial contact, which is usually the hiring manager.

• Human Resources
  

Onboarding new talent is taken care of by the HR department or a similar part of the organization. They’ll also handle things like paperwork between the new employee and the company and make sure they’re introduced to all the right people.

HR is also responsible for the rest of the employee life cycle, although there typically isn’t much to do after a certain point except take care of requests for LOAs or maternity leave.

• Existing Employees
  

If you aren’t involving the people who will have to work with a new hire in the process to select them, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to make the team feel heard. That’s one of the best employee retention strategies there are and it’s a huge misstep not to at least take their thoughts into consideration.

It might not be feasible to get a huge crew of people together to weigh in on every step of the process and the hiring manager should be the one who is ultimately responsible for hiring decisions, so if you want to involve other employees the time to do so is at the early planning stages when the role is being created and also during the onboarding of new hires.

In addition to these core members and assistants to a recruiting team, other supervisors and decision-makers like the CEO or owner should also have something to do with the hiring process if you want to make newcomers feel welcome. This will make everything happening within the company feel more cohesive and help your employee retention rates if you’re consistent about it.

The Model Recruiting Team is Outsourced

Alright, if those are some of the key members of a traditional recruiting team, what does it look like if you outsource to a staffing agency?

That’s the best news about outsourcing recruiting: you don’t need to have all of these people on the payroll if you outsource to a creative staffing agency that has its own recruiters, hiring managers, and sourcers. It’s still quite lucky you’ll need the HR department and other employees, but they’ll be freed up to do their normal work instead of having to be distracted with extra duties every time you need to bring somebody new on board.

On the contrary, icreatives has our own recruiting experts who concentrate on design trends and other aspects of creative industries so we always understand what to look out for and how to find the best talent. Our referral pool has only continued growing over the years, which means we have a large roster of creative professionals to help your team.

Other Benefits of a Creative Staffing Agency

Let’s say you have plenty of capable and professional business types on your team already. They can boost sales, promote sustained healthy growth, and keep the company’s methods on the cutting edge. But are they the most qualified to read through designers’ and IT workers’ resumes and make hiring decisions?

Not to worry, because icreatives is. We already know exact;y what separates pro-level creatives from the ones who still need a bit more practice. We’ll collect case studies and may ask for a design test and give you a shortlist of the most qualified candidates. At that stage, you’re free to conduct interviews of your own and make the final decision.

Employment Brands and Outsourcing Recruiting

If you aren’t already trying to foster a great employment brand then you’re a step behind. Current and past employees form opinions about the places they work and so do people who make it partway through the interview process. One of the best strategies to make sure talent is happy and sticks around as long as you need them is to have an open and welcoming atmosphere and procedures that are intuitive and easy to navigate for all parties involved.

Simplifying your hiring procedures by outsourcing recruiting to a creative staffing agency will accomplish all this and more. No one will have to get bogged down in lots of emails and application reviews because we take care of all of that for you.

A strong employment brand is one of the best employee retention strategies a company can have and a creative staffing agency can help you build one. We depend on our stellar reputation just like your business does so you can bet you’ll have tope talent whenever you need it.

More Flexible Budgeting with a Staffing Agency

If your hiring managers or supervisors aren’t quite sure that a certain job will be necessary, you can use icreatives to find a qualified candidate who is interested in contract or temp work. If you decide you want to keep the job around or make it seasonal, you may well have the perfect candidate already.

On the other hand, if you find that it was only a temporary need, there are plenty of creatives who use creative staffing agencies to find temp work because they want to build up new skills or they just prefer the additional freedom.

Testing out new roles with talent from icreatives means you won’t need to gamble lots of money on someone who might not work out. No longer are you restricted by a hiring budget that gets tied up every time you want to test out a new role. And you don’t have to search around for talented creatives who prefer temp or contract work because we already have a roster of just that.

What About Insourcing?

Decision-makers and other top talent who have been around long enough are already aware that the old trend towards offshoring has been reversed by many companies using a popular method called insourcing. This is pretty much the opposite of outsourcing where you would find a service that’s outsourced and bring it back in-house.

Well, guess what. We can help with that too. The huge uptick in hiring that insourcing causes is made much cheaper and faster by using icreatives. We can find qualified staff to bring the art department back in-house, even if they’re working remotely for the time being.

Insourcing is also a great employee retention strategy because the people who stay with the company will start to see that there is room for professional growth there. Many people look for work outside the company because they plateau professionally speaking, but if you can promote the people that deserve it and fill lower roles with our creatives, you’ll have a more cohesive business family in a few years.

Long-Term Growth with a Creative Staffing Agency

Far from being just a source for entry-level or part-time and contract work, icreatives can also help you find senior talent and creatives who will be in it for the long haul. We know how to look at work histories and case studies to discern which creatives are the best fit for certain companies.

If you just don’t have the talent on hand to promote or you have a senior creative leave permanently or just for a long leave of absence, we can find you someone to step in for however long you need. Since they’re vetted by our team and experienced enough to do the work, you can minimize hiccups from senior talent departures, or even onboard a temp with the departing talent before they go on an extended leave of absence.

Can a Staffing Agency Help Find Remote Creative Workers?

2020 has created a huge demand for remote work and creatives were a significant sector for that trend. Luckily, icreatives saw the trend toward remote work long ago and we’re prepared to help businesses find remote work for as long as they need it. An unspecialized staffing agency might have trouble digitizing their process, but we already had experience with remote work before the big 2020 rush so we’re fully prepared now.

We understand that this remote work trend might not be permanent for some parts of the creative industry, but we can tell you that being able to give employees the option to work from home or remotely all or part of the time is a huge benefit to most people. Using icreatives to make at least a few positions that can work remotely will be highly beneficial for retention and flexibility.

Conclusion:

The hiring process is long and almost always a huge time suck for people like managers and supervisors who have plenty of other things they can be doing with their time. Beyond just wasting their time and therefore the company’s money, using a creative staffing agency for outsourcing recruiting can help with budget flexibility.

It will certainly save time for your company to tap into icreatives’ existing pool of creative talent. You can also use our services to insource more and keep quality workers within the company for longer. This will boost employee satisfaction and retention rates because workers will see opportunities for promotion.

From senior talent to part-time graphic designers, we have it all. No matter if you need a quick replacement or a new permanent member of your team, icreatives can help find talent that will help your business stay on the cutting edge of design, advertising, and product development.

If you need help with finding creatives for any of these purposes, please contact us today and we’ll get right to work.