In today’s business world, it is extremely difficult to find talent for specific technical positions. Whether an organization is looking for a couple extra service desk staff, or needs to place a CIO, we have found that there is a huge talent shortage specifically in the IT space. Seeing that this need is prevalent, Finchloom will continue to offer our staff augmentation services, but is additionally reaching out into the recruiting sector.
As a boutique firm in the market, our methodology is simple, we only provide resumes of compatible applicants to our customers along with a summary and reasoning behind why we believe they would be a good fit for the company. Our customers do not have to go through the tedious process of sorting through piles of resumes, and instead only receive hand-picked candidates that we believe would fit the role well.
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What is Finchloom Recruiting?
To put it simply, within our recruiting offering, we provide candidate sourcing for companies who ultimately decide whether they see the individuals as an appropriate selection, and then can hire if they choose to. What distinguishes this from our staff augmentation offering is that once the employee is hired into the role, the customer is responsible for management of the new employee/role.
We offer a flexible approach for our customers and provide more of a hands-on service than traditional recruiting companies. In our experience, many recruiting firms focus on quantity over quality, providing a ton of resumes and no summary of the actual candidates asking the customer to provide an in-depth review.
Finchloom’s process involves sourcing the candidates, reviewing of resumes, and providing a summary about what we like about each candidate before the customer is even aware of the candidate. Reaching out and talking to the candidate, vetting their background, and confirming their skills and communication styles happens long before the customer hears from Finchloom. With a minimum of two touch points before the customer reviews the candidate, and a detailed summary explaining their technical skill set, we streamline the process and save our customers the hassle of dealing with a multitude of under-qualified candidates. Additionally, we will assess cultural fit within the team that we are making a placement in, as well as the organization. We can offer this because we have such a close relationship with many of our customer organizations and are privy to the cultures within.
Every job is different. Three companies can be looking for a systems engineer but have three different sets of expectations for the role that they are trying to fill. This is also part of the reason that we provide a summary along with a gaps analysis to customers, but also to tie in the soft skills that the candidate has to the job description. No one is immediately perfect for a position, they generally need to be trained on their daily routines, reoccurring tasks, and responsibilities. We have found that looking for soft skills like good communication styles, detail orientation, and eagerness to learn often overarch the main job description as some candidates can learn the role quickly, and then move on to growing it out further even if they are not completely qualified right off the bat. Prior to submitting the candidates to the customer, we have already confirmed the salary range of the position as well as the candidate’s salary expectations. If these do not line up, we will not submit the candidate to our customer.
After sending over the list of potential candidates to our customer, they make the determination as to whether they would like to interview select candidates. If they choose to move forward with any of them, Finchloom will arrange and even attend the interviews if our customer would like us to. Similarly, we will also join the interview, make introductions, and then drop from the call so that the customer can have the 1-on-1 time that they need to make a proper hiring decision.
Staff Augmentation
Finchloom’s staff augmentation service is much more involved than our recruiting offering. Within staff augmentation, we source the candidates, collaborate with our customer to make the ultimate decision, and then stay involved on a on a billable basis managing the individual in the role.
We stay involved within staff augmentation for a variety of reasons, the main being quality control. We will assist our customer on our employee placements deliverables, help with frequent updates from the candidate in the role, and provide escalation paths for the more complex challenges within the role if our customer asks us to do so. These escalation paths can provide a massive amount of cost savings to our customers.
For example, let’s say that we have recently placed a resource into a company and they lacked some of the skills or resources necessary to perform the role successfully. The candidate in this case is qualified for the role that they are trying to fill but lacks the experience necessary to be the escalation point within the team. The company also does not want to/cannot pay for a senior architect to be the dedicated contact/escalation point. In this case, we provide a cost saving measure by being that escalation point. We bill on a time and materials basis so that when there are escalations necessary, we can provide senior resources. At this point, we do not provide low level IT support or repeatable tasks from in house, hence why we offer staff augmentation with the ability to utilize our resources for upper-level tasks like designing environments and extraneous senior level work.
We have also seen that many companies decide to outsource (or staff augment) indefinitely because they can focus on operational expenditures as opposed to hiring and dealing with their budgets. It is in this way that we can offer flexible terms regarding how much of a persons dedicated time they need, whether it be 40 hours a week, or 10. Utilizing less time is common for the smaller organizations that we work with as they generally do not need a full-time administrator, but still want someone who is familiar with their organization and environment(s).
This also ties in with Finchloom’s managed technical services. If the outsourced employee gets in a bind or wants to bounce an idea off a more senior resource, they can, and we bundle it into the cost of the of the resource so that it’s not a change request and there are no contractual complications associated with the escalation. It does however give the customer a dedicated resource that’s not only very familiar with their technical environment, but also very familiar with the people that they’re working with.
Often when customers will outsource a role like a service desk, or end user support position, and one of the most common complaints in the industry is the fact that they often have a new person that they are talking to. These types of low-level technical roles tend to suffer a lot of churn because of it. This is one of the ways that we’re able to increase the value contribution to our customer environments. Finchloom does not suffer much churn in terms of the turnover of our employees, and we’re able to provide a dedicated resource that is not only familiar with the customers environment, but also is very familiar with their team so that they build confidence and don’t feel that they’re recreating the wheel every time they introduce the technical resource to a new topic.
Hiring with Staff Augmentation
Several companies that we have worked with were so happy with the candidates that Finchloom placed that they hired the employee after their contract was up. This process is completely commonplace in our business, and we have created a tiered structure to make it that much easier. Finchloom will generally offer a 6-month contract to hire deal with all our staff augmentations. Each month, the cost to hire decreases until the 6 months are complete. After 6 months, there is no cost to hire the individual, and we have already confirmed that all salary and benefits expectations are met by both parties. This 6-month period allows our clients to assess the suitability of the candidate and make sure that they are the individual that they would like to see in the role moving forward. The individual has already been working for up to 6 months with this company, so the hiring process is seamless in that regard. After 6 months are up and the candidate becomes an employee, nothing changes from their perspective except for who they are employed by.
If the placement does not end up working out for one reason or another and the company would like to start over and release the individual currently in the role, Finchloom will handle the separation and replace the individual with someone who was already in the pipeline or will begin sourcing again. This situation will not restart the contract. If a company chooses to replace the person within their contracted role after a month, there will still be only 5 months left on their contract if they would like to hire the new candidate for no cost.
Roles we Recruit or Augment for
Many staffing agencies and recruiters offer to fill very specific job titles. We do not focus on any specific job titles, but instead gather information on the roles and responsibilities of the position and then work with our internal recruiting team to find a candidate that best suits the need for the position. The typical roles that we are asked to work on with our customers tend to be within the IT department because as a Microsoft technology company, that is one of our strong suits. Additionally, we do not close the door on opportunity to help them with back office, sales, or any other positions that may need to be filled.
If your business is finding it difficult to fill unoccupied or new roles, it might be time to outsource the efforts to Finchloom. Job postings and traditional recruiting will only go so far, and with under-qualified candidates applying, masses of resumes to look through, and minimal internal recruiting efforts, it can seem impossible to find the right person. Whether you would like to augment your staff, or find a permanent placement, Finchloom can help. We have dedicated resources available immediately to help fill open positions and get your business running efficiently and effectively. To learn more about our recruiting and staff augmentation offerings, please reach out by using the form on this page or giving us a call! We will look forward to hearing from you, and thanks for reading!