COMPANIES use the services of HR companies in particular for recruiting to hard-to-fill positions or to high-profile positions, as well as to familiarise themselves with new trends in hiring processes. Roma Savel, staffing lead at Hewlett-Packard for Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary, and Milan Polča, general manager of human resources development and staffing at U.S. Steel Košice, shared their companies’ experiences of using the services provided by HR companies.
What kind of services provided by HR companies have you used? Why did your company opt to use the services of HR agencies and what did you hope to achieve by doing so?
Roma Savel (RS): We are mostly using search and selection services for hard-to-fill positions and for market research, as the agencies have direct contact with more companies and a wider variety of candidates. Due to [our] continuing growth and significant hiring volume we need the support of professionals who can help us with hard-to-find profiles and identify qualified candidates on the market. In addition to this key objective we [have benefited] from our long-term partnership with HR agencies in other fields – e.g. feedback from the market on our company, information about new trends on the market, support for new investments in HP Slovakia, etc. Thus we can also be more flexible and adjust/change our hiring processes if necessary.
Milan Polča (MP): We have used the services of HR agencies mainly in cases of recruitment of rare professions, or for high-profile positions that could not be filled from our own internal and external sources. We have never used HR agencies for personnel leasing though, mainly due to the higher costs and high fluctuation rate.
We have focused on filling positions that were hard to fill using our recruiting methods from our internal and external sources. The success rate, however, has varied: in some cases this was successful, in some not.
Is your company considering using the services of HR companies now or in the near future? Do the reasons for doing so differ from your past use of HR services?
RS: HP Slovakia has been using agencies from the very beginning and our hiring strategy relies on cooperation with recruitment agencies. Obviously we review each two years the level and quality of the HR services provided, at which time we reconsider which agencies we want to keep for further use or how to change the terms and conditions in our existing contracts to better reflects our internal needs as well as the external market.
MP: Considering the current situation on the market we do not plan to use the services of HR agencies to any great degree. As before, we will only use their services in selected cases. In addition, we have a very well implemented staffing model that we use.
This column is prepared in cooperation with AmCham, the American Chamber of Commerce in Slovakia, www.amcham.sk. The questions were prepared by The Slovak Spectator.
