March marks the launch of March Madness. Throughout the month, the NCAA hosts a Division I basketball tournament where 68 college teams from across the nation have the chance to battle it out for the right to be crowned the next national champion. The madness stems from filling out brackets and ranking teams against each other. Recruiting top talent operates in a similar fashion – “brackets” are made of candidates competing for a position and they must advance through a strenuous vetting process to be chosen as the “right hire”.
The Beginning of the Recruiting Tournament
A quality agency will utilize all its resources to source a large pool of candidates both actively and passively seeking a career change. For this round, you are choosing your initial bracket by conducting an “eye test” or assessing candidates by a certain set of criteria that can be seen on paper. For the NCAA Tournament, this criterion is often stats such as the team’s win/loss record. Similarly, candidates must pass the eye test and meet certain criteria to advance to the next round of the hiring process. Then, over the span of a couple of days, the vetting process will begin.
The Sweet 16 of Interviewing
Even if you don’t follow the NCAA Tournament, you’ve probably heard of the term “Sweet 16”. This round is when individuals truly invest in the teams they chose. Similarly, a phone interview is conducted at this stage of the hiring process. A phone screen is an important step to make sure that those who can talk the talk on paper can articulate their experience and successes in conversation. An experienced recruiter will dig deeper into the candidate’s resume by asking pinpointed questions to explore their soft and hard skills to weed out those that aren’t the correct fit for the position.
The Elite 8 of the Finalists
The Elite 8 consists of those that you believe can make it to the end. They could talk the talk but who can walk the walk better and make it into the Final Four? At this step of the hiring process, initial in-person interviews with the recruiter will slim down the bracket by ensuring that the candidates look as good as they sound. This is where a recruiter can really dive into the candidate’s personality and get a better understanding if they are a proper culture fit for the company or will be knocked out of the running for the championship.
The Final Four Cut
Typically, these teams (or candidates in this case) consistently look good on paper and in action. The recruiter should be confident in presenting these four to the company. These Final Four will be scheduled in-person interviews with the company hiring managers. You may have four superior candidates, but only one will be crowned the champion and land the position.
The Championship of Winning the Offer
Ultimately, the key to March Madness success, whether it’s hoops or hiring, is dedication, diligence, research, and hard work. Sometimes, selecting the champion can be easy… but often it can be tough when presented with 4 highly skilled and qualified candidates. The right hire is the one who has surpassed expectations and demonstrated that they will be the best fit for the team. Consider if the candidate articulated how they’d help advance the company, asked informed questions, or shared relevant industry news during the interview process. Sometimes, the candidate least expected to make it to the final round of interviews comes out on top in the end.
Finding the top talent to fill your bracket can be long and strenuous but it doesn’t have to be. A partnership with an established talent acquisition agency like AccruePartners can take the guesswork out of hiring by providing 4 precisely matched candidates right out of the gate instead of a dozen candidates that sort of match up to the job.
Play smarter when seeking your next opportunity or hiring your next employee by partnering with the champions of Charlotte staffing at AccruePartners.
We are excited to announce that we have once again been recognized on the Charlotte Business Journal’s List of Largest Temporary Staffing Companies in 2019!
With over 200 temporary consultants across 18 States, we are proud to be 18th on this year’s list! This is a considerable position increase from 20th in 2018.
AccruePartners specializes in delivering top-tier talent solutions across the United States and meeting the demands of the dynamic business environment for mid-size to large Fortune 500 companies. As we continue to grow, we are eager to provide opportunities for both our consultants and clients across the country.
Click to learn more about Temporary Opportunities at AccruePartners or how we can provide your business with exceptional Talent Solutions.
The Charlotte Business Journal released this year’s Largest Contingency Executive Search Firms list late last week. AccruePartners tops the list!
Ranked by the number of local search consultants, AccruePartners lands the no. 1 spot on the Top 25 List. Contingency firms are paid only when a position is filled. This is a great achievement for our company and we’re excited to be leading the staffing industry with continued success.
Every year the Charlotte Business Journal releases industry-specific listings of the Charlotte area’s top companies in their fields, by ranking. All of the Charlotte Business Journal’s lists, including the Largest Contingency Executive Search Firms, are compiled annually into the Book of Lists, an important business resource in the local market.
In every edition of our HR Insights Magazine, influential and wide-ranging thought leaders in HR, recruitment, staffing, management, and other fields discuss themes that are relevant to our clients’ businesses. The subjects differ from issue to issue, of course, but they are always connected to the latest industry news and trends. However, for our feature article in this issue, “Staffing Impact far Beyond Filling a Seat”, we decided to take a look inward and invite four friends of AccruePartners to our office to ask about their experiences with us and how we live up to our tagline of “Building People, Companies, and Careers”. Three of them are current clients: Ayana Harnett, director of talent acquisition for one of our distribution clients (and a former AccruePartners employee); Johnny Morgan, CEO of another one of our distribution clients; and Brenda Sandoval-Logsden, human resources manager for one of our service clients (and a former AccruePartners candidate). The fourth, Alissa Farrow, is our current vice president of staffing.
Growth is one topic that appears frequently in this edition. Sometimes the authors discuss organizational growth, or how to expand a candidate pool or client base. Another article in this month’s issue, “How to Promote Career Growth in a Top-Heavy Organization,” shows Christina Chau taking a closer look at employee growth. She asks (and answers) the question that all organizations must wrestle with at one time or another: “How can a company help its employees have careers that are healthy and growing when there’s no room for promotion or raises?” She recommends including opportunities for skill building, increased access to exciting opportunities and helping to build their social network. Without offering opportunities for growth, Chau cautions that companies run the risk of seeing their most valuable employees leave.
No matter how well a company is doing right now, it needs to be ready for whatever is coming down the pike. Each day brings its own successes and challenges, and organizations that do not plan for the future will find themselves struggling when it arrives. Let us help your business develop and implement a plan to prepare for the road ahead!
As a staffing and recruiting firm focused on finding top talent for a wide range of industries, we have pioneered talent workforce solutions and the methodologies needed to deliver success to every client. Our approach allows businesses to receive quality service and industry expertise as one would from a boutique staffing firm, all in a seamless, efficient, and valuable manner.
In response to our methods and persistence of unparalleled performance, AccruePartners was awarded a spot as a Clutch leader for staffing and recruiting services, out of the 50+ most highly reviewed firms for corresponding services. Clutch analysts thoroughly evaluated each company on their market presence and expertise, services offered, and ability to deliver exceptional results for their clients. AccruePartners achieved 3rd for top staffing companies and recruiting companies, respectively.
Most valued was our clients’ feedback and our expertise in the industry. Clients provided valuable insight into our quality of work, value for cost, and best attributes as a service provider. Through Clutch’s research and our persistence to stay at the forefront of HR, we achieved the prestigious position as one of the strongest performing staffing and recruiting agencies in the world.
Here’s a remark one of our clients mentioned on our Clutch profile:
“Quality, responsibility, and service are their strengths.” – IT Director, Tech Firm
A huge thank you goes out to our dedicated, hard-working team and our incredible clients for making this award possible.
Your business depends on having the right people doing the right jobs. As the job market gets more competitive and companies increasingly vie with each other to attract the best talent, they run the risk of hiring too quickly—too rashly—and ending up with the wrong people. Fortunately, this edition of HR Insights is full of information about how to avoid this mistake.
In this edition’s feature article, “The Best Candidates Aren’t Always the Ones with the Best Degrees,” Ira S. Wolfe presents a cautionary tale about the dangers of placing too much emphasis on candidates’ educational credentials and not looking closely enough at what they can actually do. “Fortunately,” he points out, “there are ways to use education and experience more reliably” to get a sense of a candidate’s potential to fill a particular position well.
Whether an organization is hiring onsite or remote workers, it needs to make sure that candidates know what they’re signing up for. Many companies are exploring new ways to convey this information, and in “Realistic Job Previews: 5 Questions Recruiters Should Ask” Sharlyn Lauby discusses one hiring strategy that, if properly implemented, can pay off big for companies and candidates alike.
Does your organization have a plan to meet its staffing needs in the near and long-term future? Whether you know that you need to reevaluate your hiring strategy or are just starting to think about this subject, we can help you figure out what you need to do to get to where you want to go!