Staffing & Recruiting: Do They Have Common Goals?

These two terms are often interchangeably used, and for this reason, they’re often confused too – one with the other. While it’s easy to assume that staffing and recruiting are two sides of the same coin, the reality is far from so. The two words may sound to mean the same, but they’re actually different. Here we attempt to explain whether staffing and recruitment goals are common or are they two different processes.

Staffing and Recruiting – Common Goals They Share

These two processes indeed have some common objectives. Here’s what they share in common:

• The common purpose both these processes intend to achieve is finding a suitable candidate to fill a specific role in the organisation.
• Both these services come to the applying candidates free of cost; the fee is charged by the concerned companies in search for prospective employees.
• Both these processes are targeted at addressing common problems faced by the business or the HR. These include difficulty in hiring the right talent, employee retention or low employee productivity.

Now that we’ve discussed the common objectives of recruitment and staffing in any organisation, let’s look at some of the key differences between the two. You’d then know that these two terms aren’t really interchangeable.

How Staffing and Recruiting are Different from Each Other

1. Staffing agencies hired by most businesses aim at hiring candidates to fill short-term job positions. People for these roles are intended as temporary hires and appointed on contractual or project basis.
   Recruitment companies are asked to provide candidates to companies for full-time, permanent roles.
2. Staffing agencies can be really good at expediting the search-and-hire process for a company. They’re generally preferred over recruitment firms for urgent position-filling.
3. Staffing firms generally maintain a well-researched database of candidates. This helps them scan through those immediately available with the desired specific skill sets in case of urgent requirement by a company..
   Recruitment firms, on the other hand, may work both with candidates actively looking for jobs and those who aren’t.
4. Companies generally hire staffing agencies to fill an urgent requirement. They’d therefore provide specific information regarding skill sets requirement. As such, the agency wouldn’t need to be too involved in candidate screening and interviews.
   Recruitment firms would first flash the requirement for a suitable candidate, screen relevant resumes, organise interviews with shortlisted candidates and finally select the ones that best suit the job requirement in hand.
5. The staffing process is actively involved in the complete life cycle of employment of a particular candidate. This includes appraisal, promotion, retention policies and exit interview of the employee.
   A recruitment company, as explained above, is more involved in the actual selection and hiring process of a candidate. It’s therefore less concerned in the latter’s entire employment cycle.

Summing Up

Now we understand that even though staffing and recruitment do share a common goal of finding the right candidate for the company to fill a role, they do have their fair set of differences. It doesn’t seem appropriate to use them inversely then.