Online platforms like Indeed and LinkedIn have made the direct hiring process more accessible for employers, but hiring without the help of a recruitment agency still often means more work and time for in-house hirers.
In this article we look at how to make direct hiring easier, the benefits of direct hire vs agency recruitment, and where to start with the direct hire process.
What is Direct Hiring?
The opposite strategy to recruiting through an agency is direct hire, meaning that it is a case of companies taking more control over who they hire. Direct hire cuts out the middle man, with a company offering a job directly and employing withiut using a third party, such as a recruitment agency or headhunter.
What are the Advantages of Direct Hire vs Agency Recruitment?
While temporary or contract positions are often filled using indirect hiring, there are advantages to using direct hiring to fill permanent positions or senior leadership roles. Benefits of direct hire staffing include the company knowing exactly who they are talking to from an early stage*, perhaps finding the candidate through a recommendation or related firm, as well as the employed person generally feeling more valued by the company when they are in the role as they have been specifically selected by the organisation rather than placed by a third party.
Another more obvious direct hire advantage is its cost-effectiveness for businesses. Although it may require more research and time than outsourcing the hire, businesses can save on recruitment agency fees and from the employee’s perspective, they may benefit from a higher starting salary as a result of a no-fees direct hire process.
If you really...REALLY...want to know who you’re recruiting via a direct hire contract, it’s highly recommended you perform an early-stage background screening check on the candidate. YOONO is a discrete and fast tool for generating search reports on individuals, covering their social media presence, employment background and much more.
What are the Disadvantages of Direct Hire vs Contract Recruitment?
Direct hire disadvantages include the time required to take on a more in-depth recruitment process, including time spent on initial research, background screening and direct hire interviews. Other direct hire drawbacks include increased liability, through the provision of benefits to direct hire employees, as well as expected investment in recruitment, training and retirement programmes from the employer.
How to Make Direct Hiring Easier: 10 Tips
Choosing between direct hire vs agency recruitment can simply be a case of whether the business has the resources available to direct hire in the first place. For rapidly growing businesses looking to bring on temp hire at volume, direct hire probably isn’t going to be the best choice. For permanent contract hires or leadership roles, direct hire is likely to bring more long-term value into the business.
If you do decide that direct hiring is likely to be the right strategy for your business, you can make the contract staffing process altogether smoother and simpler with the following tips in mind, helping you to realise the full benefits of direct hiring as opposed to agency recruitment.
Read on to discover how to make direct hiring easier and more effective, as well as tips for building more talent-attracting features into your business.
01 - Consider your company culture
A lynchpin of therapy is to first look within yourself before analysing any external factors, and companies could also benefit from performing a little introspection before bringing in new hires. Many business owners will have a biased or limited view of their organisation’s work culture, influenced by the amount of (often filtered) information they receive from managers or by simply being too busy keeping business matters afloat to prioritise work culture.
The first step in considering direct hiring is to make sure that the work culture of your organisation is healthy and is enticing to external talent, so if you feel a little in the dark about the mood and morale within your business, now is the time to investigate. When attracting high quality candidates, you will need to highlight positive aspects, such as worker benefits, team culture or flexitime, and work towards reducing any negative cultural factors, such as employee dissatisfaction. More extreme problems like a ‘revolving door’ culture or toxic workplace will need to be faced head-on before considering bringing in new team members.
02 - Create an employee-centric brand for your business
The first thing a candidate will do after initial reach-out? Look up your business online. Pulling together an employee-centric brand for your business is really important for selling your organisation to potential talent, which means building social media channels that showcase employee activities, benefits and events.
Have a regular team brunch on a Friday, enticing local amenities or a beautifully designed office space? It’s worth shouting about these things through an active LinkedIn company page, regular Instagram posts or immersive TikTok reels. These tasters of what it might be like to work at your business may well spell the difference between a direct hire accepting a role or going elsewhere.
03 - Build a clear job description
For direct hire, you will need to craft a clear and comprehensive job description, including detailed breakdown of role, responsibilities, contract terms and benefits. This is more important to do than if you were to use a recruitment agency for hiring, as direct hire is more time-intensive for the employer. In other words, you don’t want to waste a lot of time finding, screening and interviewing candidates to find that they aren’t actually going to be the right fit.
To ensure that the direct hire candidates you bring to interview are going to be worth talking to, it’s also a really good idea to perform a preliminary screening check, like those provided by YOONO, which allows you to gain early insights into the background of candidates before you invite them to interview stage.
04 - Go multi-channel to find candidates
The good news for direct hiring companies is that direct hire staffing options have opened up significantly with online recruitment. Many industry blogs feature online job boards (if you’re looking for a designer or architect, for example, you can post on Dezeen’s well-respected jobs board and social media platforms like LinkedIn are fantastic for connecting to candidates, seeing more about their credentials and promoting your company brand.
If you have a company website, you can also post direct hire job openings on a careers page, but note that it’s likely you will have to cross-promote this elsewhere, such as on LinkedIn or job sites like Indeed or Glassdoor, to ensure that as many candidates as possible see the opening. You can also attend networking events and post in industry forums to promote direct hire opportunities.
05 - Borrow Little Black Books
Many of the best direct hires come from referrals, as people will have seen the person ‘in action’ and also have a good sense of whether the individual would be a good fit on a cultural level for the business. Encourage current staff members to share their recommendations, and make it known amongst your industry connections that you are looking to hire.
06 - Screen direct hire candidates using YOONO
Once you have a potential list of candidates to hand, you will need to do some background research into each person before drawing up your interview selection. Online research can be time-consuming and arduous, so it makes sense to use helpful tech to save time at this stage.
A background screening tool like YOONO, which uses AI powered search to generate reports about a person’s social media use, educational background, employment history and more, is a fantastic tool for screening direct hire candidates at this early, pre-consent stage.
07 - Have a structured direct hire interview process
Once you’ve sourced and screened your candidates, you should aim to put a structured interview process in place that allows you to assess individuals’ suitability for a role. A two- or three-stage interview process is advisable for senior roles, and it’s also important that a variety of team members at different levels of authority are able to sit in on interviews to give a well-rounded view of the person’s suitability.
A structured interview process may be time-consuming for both the employer and candidates, but it will give you as the employer confidence that the person is going to be right for the job, and it also gives the candidate the impression that the business is highly invested in finding the right person, making them feel more valued when they do come into the business.
08 - Consider a trial period
Most direct employers are looking to bring in permanent employees, with an expectation that they will stay for the long-term. While probation periods are the norm for direct hires, you can also consider offering a trial period, in a similar mode to temp-to-hire, if you want to assess whether the candidate fits well within the position and the organisation as a whole. You should aim to make this clear to candidates from the outset of the direct hire process, however.
09 - Develop a structured onboarding process
One of the biggest advantages of direct hire is finding people who are likely to stay longer within an organisation, and have a greater sense of having been specially selected for a role. However, this sense of self-worth can be chipped away quickly without a structured onboarding process in place.
Training schemes, team days and swift IT onboarding will help your chosen candidate to integrate quicker and sets a good tone for going forward. This will also empower new employees to support new hires in the future with similar onboarding support.
10 - Build brand loyalty into the direct hire process to encourage future talent
With your new direct hire now in place and onboarded, you can focus on growing your business further. While recruiting can be time-consuming for direct hire employers, the long-term positive impact of choosing and hiring your own employees is usually well worth the effort.
To attract even more future talent into your business, you can work towards building brand loyalty into the direct hire process. We’ve already mentioned the role that a structured interview and onboarding process can play in making candidates feel valued, but there are other, additional ways you can build brand loyalty into a hiring scheme.
According to Career Hackers, Gen Z employees are starting to see through the artificial glamour of social media, and fabricated brand content from companies doesn’t carry the same sheen it once did. Instead, candidates are looking to assess what they will gain in value from a company before they even apply for a job. Candidates look for value by sourcing inspiration, being equipped with knowledge and skills, feeling seen and heard, or clarifying their career path.
To build brand loyalty into a direct hiring scheme, businesses need to lay out what employees will gain in value by working for them on a more enriching level, rather than simply glamourising the workplace in an artificial or exaggerated way.
Direct hiring can bring so much long-term benefit to a business, and is a great way of setting the right tone for your employees from the outset, making them feel highly valued. With the 10 tips above in mind, you can make a confident start on embarking on your own direct hire process.
Tech can be a huge help in hiring, and is particularly useful for shaving time off an otherwise lengthy recruitment process. Online networking can help you to find candidates quickly, while a smart background screening tool like YOONO can give you essential insights into individuals’ backgrounds before you even go to interview stage.
