There was a time when most business was local. Even large national and multinational

companies with a global presence largely operated out of centralized locations. Today trends in

acquisitions, deployment of technology, and the need for better access to customers, are driving

companies toward increasingly dispersed locations nationwide. This often requires teams of

highly proficient professionals with specialized skills to be deployed or hired locally across the

country. However, maintaining consistent company culture across nationwide locations is vital,

and this stringent consistency has extended into all of the functions that go into national hiring

strategies. From job postings, to candidate recruiting, to onboarding, and even rejection, hiring

practices must be consistent, effective, and efficient.

To meet these trends, many companies have implemented National Recruiting strategies

working with agencies to find, recruit, and onboard qualified candidates. Often, Managed

Service Providers (MSPs) work with sizeable groups of recruiting vendors to ensure healthy

competition, cost control, and to realize the advantages of outsourcing while maintaining a

single point of contact.

But like most strategies, the key to success is in the execution. How is a client brand and

culture ultimately represented to candidates? Are national clients the priorities they should

be? Where is service actually coming from? How is HR compliance being handled?

For companies recruiting on a national scale, the answers to these questions can have a huge

impact on immediate needs such as filling positions quickly, and then to longer term strategic

concerns such as overall brand quality, candidate experience, and impact on company culture.

There are key factors that should be considered in a national recruiting strategy.

National Companies Crave Brand Consistency. Their Recruiting Needs It Too.

Strategies in National Recruitingby Heath LuikartArea Vice President Strategic Engagements, Nesco Resource

Mary Anderson Kristynik VP, Supplier Strategy | Randstad SourceRight

“Nesco Resource has been

a valued supplier partner for

more than five years; supporting

multiple MSP programs providing

quality talent in the Engineering

& IT, Clerical & Light Industrial

and Accounting & Finance skill

categories.

Our two organizations successfully

coalesce, share best practices,

work together, and synergistically

create solutions to best support

our clients.”

We all want to believe that we’re a #1 priority with any service

provider. In fact, we expect it when it comes to large scale corporate

accounts. However, the staffing industry is still largely local. Most

recruiting is largely performed on a local branch level, scattered

throughout the towns and cities across all 50 States.

While that may sound ideal, the reality is that tapping into a branch

network may not be the best fit for a national recruiting strategy.

Here’s why:

When a job order comes down through an MSP, it goes to a vendor

who then often depends on a network of branch offices to fulfill the

job order. But those branch offices are focused on filling orders for

their local clients who they have direct contact with. In addition,

ensuring that hundreds of branches consistently respond to the

specific needs of a client on a national scales such as verifying

skills, compliance, and other requirements, can be a challenge.

There are definitely some jobs that require a branch network. These

so called ‘boots on the ground’ jobs require a local relationship

for positions needing a great deal of personal interaction in the

screening, safety, and orientation process. Having both allows for a

vendor to quickly respond and consistently perform.

National customers are always a priority, right?

There’s nothing wrong with a branch network. In fact, Nesco

Resource has a network of over 90 branch office nationwide covering

most of the Continental US. It’s a great system, but sometimes not

ideal for execution of national recruiting campaigns. In fact, that’s

part of the reason why we came up with a unique alternative.

While we do rely on an extensive branch network for some recruiting

services in performance on national accounts, a greater number are

managed through our National Recruiting Centers. These centers

work together to assess the needs of a position and recruit candidates

quickly, putting a priority on filling national positions.

In addition to putting a priority on national recruiting work, a

centralized system also consolidates processes. After all, it is one

thing to find a candidate, but it’s another set of challenges entirely

to ensure all of the paperwork, drug tests, security clearances, and

background checks are uniformly completed.

There’s nothing wrong with

a branch network. Finding

a candidate is only the first

step. There is another set

of challenges ensuring that

all of the paperwork, drug

tests, security clearances,

and background checks

are uniformly completed.

Centralized Compliance Team

Balancing Offshoring Challenges

Focus and Flexibility

The employment needs of a large national

company can vary across geographies and

the skill and experience requirements of

certain jobs. Searching, recruiting, and

onboarding for a wide range of positions

requires a flexible approach to recruiting

Nesco Resource, for example, focuses its

national recruiting efforts in the realm of

engineering, IT and Professional services,

while many local branch offices focus more

so on the Light Industrial, Administrative

roles. This reflects the general mobility

of a population and also speaks to finding

the right skills for the right job over a wide

geographic range.

Specializing in Engineering and IT services

since the company was founded in 1956

has provided the experience to create our

current structure, systems, and processes.

Those original roots have helped grow

a National Recruiting structure that

understands the needs of Engineering and

IT positions as well as the needs of skilled

manufacturing and administrative jobs. The

structure that we’ve created (a focused

national recruiting team coupled with a

branch network) helps maintain focus on

the job at hand.

Offshoring is a reality in the recruiting

business and it has clear advantages, such

as helping to reduce costs for processes.

Ultimately, offshoring allows companies

to free up funding to grow their business

by investing in other components of

management, sales, and service personnel.

However, many times outsourcing can

lead to poor service that erodes candidate

experience, reflects poorly on a brand, and

leads to slower, less effective service.

Nesco Resource carefully examined

options when it was looking to expand its

operations overseas. Ultimately we chose

to near-shore some operations in Costa

Rica, and to couple these activities with our

National and Strategic Recruiting Centers

in Orlando and Columbus. Costa Rica is

commonly known for its eco-tourism, but

it is also the corporate home in Central

America to many Fortune 1000 companies

who take advantage of a well-educated

population, largely fluent in English. In

early 2015, Nesco Resource opened its first

recruiting call center in Costa Rica. The time

zone parity with the US allows our teams

to work closely together and the team’s

familiarity with both English and Spanish

helps facilitate communication with a wider

swath of candidates in the United States.

Still the process of working together is

closely controlled so that there is a seamless

service model to both our clients and the

talent pool. Our goal with off shoring is to

provide competitive pricing hand-in-hand

with excellent client service and a seamless

candidate experience.

As mentioned early, compliance is a serious

issue when it comes to filling positions.

Having a centralized compliance team

working in tandem, but separated from the

recruiting team streamlines the process and

also leads to more consistent results.

The compliance team is responsible for

contractual adherence to each program

and onboarding of contractors whether

through the SRC or a local branch when

it falls under MSP programs. They send

all required paperwork specific for each

client when a candidate is hired. They

initiate backgrounds and perform education

verifications for the hires. They schedule

drug test and follow up with candidates if

test haven’t been taken.

In addition, this team actively follows up

with candidates and vendors performing

drug and backgrounds to push the process

along ensuring a faster turnaround time for

clients. The compliance team also reviews

all drug and background for program

compliance and verifies that all client

specific paperwork has been completed

before clearing the candidates to start.

Lastly the compliance team handles all

program audits monthly or quarterly. They

are responsible for ensuring that Nesco

Resource receives 100% compliance scores

on all audits.

Again, requirements for compliance can

vary greatly between different clients and

the two teams working closely together

ensures that the process is seamless.

Candidate experience is often overlooked when examining a recruiting process. We’ve

mentioned some of the pitfalls and opportunities within a national recruiting effort for

candidate experience.

But why does it matter so much? Very simply, candidate experience impacts every brand at

every level.

However, candidate experience can also impact the external brand image of a company. For

consumer companies, candidates are also often consumers of the brand’s products. But even

for B2B companies, candidates can eventually be employed at competitors or even customer

sites where a bad experience can infect a large array of relationships. Candidate experience is

important for every brand because its implications are so far reaching.

Nesco Resource surveys its candidates on a regular basis to measure experiences both good

and bad. These surveys measure one key element called the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Very

simply, the NPS score measures the number of people who would recommend your products or

services to someone else.

For example, within our pool of candidates nationwide, Nesco Resource garnered an NPS

score of 52% compared to an industry average of 24%. That means that more than double the

average number of Nesco Resource candidates had a good enough experience to recommend

us to others. Knowing the NPS score your candidates are giving their experience is important

because it impacts potentially large of areas of your business both internally and externally.

Obviously, the impact of a candidate’s experience is clear if that candidate is hired: their

feelings about the company that they are now working for can impact their performance

and the performance of other employees. This is reason enough to ensure candidate

experience is a good one.

A national recruiting strategy must be more than simply casting a wide net for candidates. Company culture,

specific skill needs, and ensuring that candidates all have an optimal experience from beginning to end no matter

the outcomes – these are all vitally important factors. Choosing the partners to work with on national recruiting

around these parameters is key to a successful strategy now and in the future.

Why Candidate Experience Counts

Summary

www.nescoresource.com

Nesco has been able to identify and attract

customer care, ISC, IT, manufacturing

engineers and candidates for the hard-to-

find skills…for years prior, other agencies

fell short.

The end to end cycle time of staffing these

positions has been reduced by 33%, while

retention and eligibility to convert to FTEs

has significantly improved.

Additionally, the caliber of talent has been

elevated to a new level, which ultimately

shortens the learning curve, and enables

us to improve our direct labor efficiency

month over month.“

Human Resource Manager Major National Technology Brand