You certainly can. When you partner with the accounting and finance experts at Randstad, the benefits go way beyond access to talent for today’s most in-demand roles. 

For example, we can provide you with:

• workforce insights and talent planning solutions that really move the needle on hiring KPIs

• today’s most sophisticated hiring technologies to improve engagement and enhance your organization’s workforce management capabilities 

• emerging workplace trends and market data relevant to your region and industry — we’re talking business intelligence that will directly contribute to your bottom line 

Of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. So even if you don’t have a vacancy today, odds are good that you will at some point down the line. By partnering with us in advance, you’ll be far better prepared to take action and get ahead — no matter what tomorrow throws in your path 

To go back to the learning center for Randstad's accounting and finance, click here. For additional related topics, see below.

No. All of our services and resources are free for our candidates. In fact, we empower them with a host of valuable career resources — from help with resume writing to interview prep support. We also offer them opportunities to work one-on-one with our hiring consultants to hone their skills and strengthen their candidacies. Offering support like this makes sense to us, because it means we’re able to deliver the best possible candidates to our clients. 

And when you’re ready to evaluate a candidate, rest assured, we’ll provide you with a wealth of relevant information and documentation to ensure you make an informed decision.

To go back to the learning center for Randstad's accounting and finance, click here. For additional related topics, see below.

In the course of our almost six decades of experience in the recruiting space, we've had ample time to experiment, iterate and refine our approach to staffing and recruiting — that’s how we’ve arrived at best-in-class.

So like most staffing firms, we’re using the latest technologies, like our robust applicant tracking system (ATS). But unlike most staffing firms, we’re using these technologies in novel ways — typically in combination with or alongside other portals, platforms and point-source solutions — in ways that maximize their value. It’s helped us build an unmatched network of talent from coast to coast, including both active and passive candidates. 

But technology is only a small part of the story. What really differentiates Randstad is the human touch. Our recruiters take the time to get to know you and your business —  where you stand today and where you’re looking to go tomorrow. That’s how we ensure that candidates are the right fit for your company.

To go back to the learning center for Randstad's accounting and finance, click here. For additional related topics, see below.

With one of the world's largest staffing firms backing us up, the accounting and finance experts at Randstad have abundant resources to help connect your business to the talent you need — and we’ll do that faster than our competition. 

For instance, to shorten the length of your search and deliver highly qualified talent, we leverage new tech tools, including automated reference checking and interview management software. It’s a good example of the fact that, when you partner with Randstad, access to a large network of candidates (available on demand) is only the beginning of the benefits for your business.

To go back to the learning center for Randstad's accounting and finance, click here. For additional related topics, see below.

Competition for top talent is today at an all-time high, and that means the hiring landscape is in flux. Companies across industries are realizing that they need to embrace new, innovative methods for finding talent — otherwise, they risk getting left behind. The bottom line is that continuing with “business as usual” simply isn’t going to cut it. 

In that context, more and more companies are turning to staffing partners like Randstad for support with their most pressing talent-related pain points.

While you may have handled hiring in-house in the past, the realities of today's talent market call for a new approach. When you partner with us:

• You'll save time on pre-screening and interviewing processes.

• By moving more quickly, you’ll reduce the risk of losing top talent to competitors. 

• We'll leverage our vast network of qualified professionals, along with today's latest sourcing technologies, to find the right candidates — fast. 

If working with a staffing partner isn’t how you've traditionally sourced and hired talent in the past, that fact alone — in the context of ongoing economic disruption — might be a good reason to consider doing so in the future. 

To go back to the learning center for Randstad's accounting and finance, click here. For additional related topics, see below.

When you’ve got unfilled accounting and finance roles, there’s no time to lose. So we make it quick and easy to get the ball rolling when you partner with us. For example: 

• We've laid out our billing and 90-day guarantee terms in simple, easy-to-read one-pagers. 

• You can share these one-pagers with internal stakeholders for review, and that should help expedite our partnership. 

Once approval is secured, we'll get started right away. Accelerating the hiring cycle — it’s just one of the ways we’ll help you win in-demand talent.

To go back to the learning center for Randstad's accounting and finance, click here. For additional related topics, see below.

We have a long history of successful partnerships with companies of all sizes — from small startups and nonprofits to large global corporations. What’s more, we can deliver on-demand talent solutions to companies in virtually every sector. And because our hiring consultants specialize in individual markets and segments across the U.S., we’re uniquely prepared to meet the needs of all our clients, no matter their size or location.

To go back to the learning center for Randstad's accounting and finance, click here. For additional related topics, see below.

Before you focus your attention on finding even more new employees, make sure you’ve done enough work to retain the talent that’s already on your team, otherwise you may find yourself caught in a never-ending cycle of hiring. 

Between changing what you pay to adding new amenities to your workplace, there are a lot of tactics you can employ to improve your retention levels. The more you’re able to implement from the list below, the better your results will be. But even adopting one or two of these strategies can start taking your firm in the right direction and help you keep your people longer so you won’t have to hire as often.

offer better pay and benefits

First thing’s first: are you paying your employees what they’re worth? If you notice unusually high turnover with your new hires, low salary and weak benefits may be the culprits. Check out our salary calculator to see how your employees’ salaries stack up, and adjust your pay rates accordingly.

Once you’ve made some improvements to your pay rates, it’s time to focus on benefits. Benefits can be just as — if not more than — effective at retaining top talent. In fact, 61 percent of employees say they’d accept a lower salary if a company had a great benefits package.  

align offerings with current worker expectations

As you look to revamp your benefits package, make sure it aligns with the expectations of today’s workers. Employees are now looking for benefits that enhance their quality of life, so offering onsite amenities (like gyms and dry cleaning) will allow them to maximize their time in the office while preventing home priorities from interfering with work.

On top of that, today’s workers are also interested in training and development opportunities that can help them advance their careers — so making an investment in upskilling can be good for both their satisfaction and your bottom line.

target your top performers 

Putting in this investment up front to retain your top performers may help you avoid the cost of backfilling vacant roles and enable you to keep your best workers around. It may seem like a lot of attention to pay to a small portion of your workforce, but when you consider that the the top five percent of your team produces 26 percent of your organization's total output, it’s a smart way to allocate your resources. 

With retention under control, you should start noticing that you won’t have to worry about the hassle of engaging the hiring market as often. However, when you do, your original problem still remains: finding great candidates is a challenge.

While job boards can be a spectacular resource for finding and hiring new employees, they take time to search through, as you’re required to vet each individual applicant to see if they’re worth interviewing. From start to finish, this process can take months.

If you’re having trouble finding skilled talent on your own, it could be for a number of reasons. Maybe you don’t have access to the right network of talent, or maybe you do, but your hiring process always seems to drag on for months, during which time your target candidates end up accepting offers elsewhere. 

Or maybe you know all the right things to do, but you just don’t have enough time to dedicate to the task of hiring full time. Whatever the particular reason may be for your firm, a staffing firm has the knowledge and resources to help. 

a staffing firm’s main objective is to match you with the skilled employees you need.

A staffing firm’s main objective is to match you with the skilled employees you need, when you need them. They can help you overcome your hiring challenges by:

Finding talent that better fits your workplace: Staffing firms have specialized recruiters who will partner with you to understand not only the skills and qualifications you’re looking for in your next new hire, but also elements like culture and fit. 

Delivering talent with the right skills: Staffing firms have access to their own vast networks of experienced accounting and finance professionals. That means when they send you a curated list of candidates to choose from, you know they’ve already gone through — and passed — prior rounds of evaluation. 

Providing workforce management strategies: In addition to finding you great candidates, staffing firms can also provide you with tailored strategies to help you engage and retain your new employees as well as improve your own staffing strategy for the future. 

By keeping your best employees around and partnering with a staffing firm, you should already be beginning to see better hires and more stability in your workforce. However, when busy season rolls around, or unplanned vacancies arise on your team, all that work you did to improve your staffing strategy could easily go out the window.   

When that happens, there’s no time to waste — you need new talent now — but rushing and ending up with a bad hire on your hands isn’t the answer either. In a situation like this, widening your search to include temporary talent can help you get the people you need in a pinch without the risks associated with committing to a full-time hire.   

A trusted staffing firm can help you to not only find reliable long-term talent — they can match you with skilled temporary workers who can get to work fast. And hiring temporary employees has a number of perks: You get trusted, vetted accounting and finance talent added to your team quickly (which is especially advantageous during your busy season) and you can keep them on for as long (or as short!) as you need. 

Plus, if a temporary employee ends up being a great fit, you can easily convert them to a permanent member of your team. Temporary talent is a great low-risk approach to growing your team as you can add, remove and swap employees based on your needs — without paying the hefty price that comes with commitment. 

There is no secret sauce when it comes to finding the best employees: It’s all about taking a step back and reassessing the big picture. Is your company somewhere people want to work? Do you offer the benefits employees want? Do they feel valued? If you can confidently answer yes to all of these questions, you should have no trouble attracting — and retaining — today’s top talent. 

Interested in taking a peek at some of these candidates? Visit our Find Employees tool now to see who’s available!

So with time short and other priorities demanding your attention, how are you supposed to dedicate the right amount of time and resources to the task of hiring? The truth is that it's tough, and if any of this sounds familiar, then you might actually benefit from making no new hires at all.

Upskilling your existing employees and training them in areas that you normally would have addressed with an outside hire can save you valuable time and money — all while ensuring your organization still gets the specialized support it needs. Here's where to start. 

40% of hiring managers in accounting and finance see recruiting and retaining talent as their biggest challenges.

why upskilling?

Far too often, enterprise leaders focus on recruiting new hires, rather than internal advancement. But while the fresh perspective that a new hire can bring to your organization is certainly valuable, their impact is often delayed due to time spent training, onboarding and getting all-around acclimated to a new work environment.

That's where upskilling comes in. A Pew study and Randstad's own research have revealed that the lion's share of workers believe it's critical to receive training and develop new skills in order to keep up with the seismic changes taking place in the workplace — making upskilling your team a win-win situation. The opportunities for training and certification you provide will strengthen your workforce and add additional value to your operations, while also building workforce morale and driving employee engagement and retention. 

but isn't upskilling my team going to be expensive?

Yes, there are obvious costs involved in subsidizing certification programs for your employees. But the cost of a bad hire or lost productivity as you keep a senior-level position open for months while you wait for that unicorn candidate to appear is far more expensive. While you may not have the financial flexibility to devote to upskilling right now due to the dramatic impact that COVID-19 has had on business, it's a temporary condition. And as we start returning to normal, you'll want to be prepared to hit the ground running when it comes to the training and development of your team.

Our research shows that the average time to fill for a majority of accounting and finance firms is two to three months.* And during that time, you'll be forced to allocate resources to focus on hiring rather than other tasks. Plus, the longer a position remains vacant, the longer existing workers will have to step in and cover additional duties, effectively making them less productive in both areas. Calculate what that means for your business, and you'll quickly see how cost-effective upskilling can be.

So what are the credentials you should be offering your team in order to build the knowledge base needed to drive business success today? Here are the top five certifications available, and what you need to know about each of them. 

time to hire for a majority of organizations we surveyed was between 2 to 3 months. 

certified public accountant

The gold standard in accounting credentials, certified public accountants (CPAs) are equipped to handle even the most pressing financial challenges. From corporate tax preparation to financial analysis to business strategy, this credential differentiates the best from the rest.

certified management accountant

For those who want to deepen their expertise of corporate finance and management accounting, the certified management accountant (CMA) credential is the way to go. Many pros often pursue both a CPA and a CMA, but the latter is of particular importance to those working in the corporate sector, especially those in multinational organizations.

And this certification is particularly forward-looking: As of January 2020, the CMA program will place more emphasis on technology, analytics, professional ethics and decision analysis — all critical muscles businesses will want to have flexed in order to drive growth and success.

chartered financial analyst

The chartered financial analyst (CFA) designation is the best credential for those working in investment management and securities. Not only does it confirm that the professional is at the top of their field, but it guarantees expert-level knowledge with regards to reviewing and analyzing even the most complex of accounting reports, forecast trends and investment strategies.

The CFA program digs deep into ethical standards in finance, making it a great filter for employers to use when determining top candidates for a position.

chartered global management accountant

Chartered Global Management Accountants (CGMA) have extensive mastery of accounting and finance operations and best practices, as well as deep expertise in strategic business planning and management. Created for management accountants hungry to transform into business leaders, this global certification is awarded to those who are committed to staying on top of developments in the accounting and finance realm. Having these stars on board is a surefire way to future-proof your business.

certified payroll professional

Looking to help your payroll professionals reach the next level of their careers? Then help them acquire their certified payroll professional (CPP) credential, which signifies a deep knowledge of payroll taxes, benefits standards and compliance (and much more) — all important competencies to have as regulatory standards continue to change at a rapid pace.

* Randstad US, "randstad professionals: client survey executive summary." 2019. 

Hungry for other steps you can take to up your hiring game? Make sure you follow these best hiring practices for accounting and finance, and if you want to start browsing candidates with the right skills for your open roles, head on over to our Find Employees portal to start hiring today.

job seekers will accept a lower salary if a company has a great benefits package.

After all, with record-low unemployment and a competitive, candidate-driven job market to contend with, how are smaller companies supposed to compete with larger titans that can lure top talent away with best-in-class salaries?

Thankfully, today's workforce is looking beyond salary when it comes to choosing their next employer. In fact, 66 percent of workers see a strong benefits and perks package as the most significant factor in determining whether to accept a job offer, and 61 percent are willing to accept a lower salary if a company has a great benefits package.

So for those enterprise leaders who know their offerings haven't been meeting candidates' salary expectations, here are seven benefits and perks you can bring to the table to get top talent to come on board.

1. perks that promote a work-life balance

Randstad's own research shows that 94 percent of workers want their employers to offer a benefits package that meaningfully impacts their quality of life. So to attract top candidates to your organization, be sure to offer perks that speak to an ideal work-life balance, such as flexible schedules, opportunities for remote work or telecommuting and summer Fridays.

workers want employers to offer benefits that meaningfully improve their quality of life.

2. expanded health and wellness benefits

Of course your benefits package needs to include robust health coverage, so that employees know they won't have to break the bank to receive the medical care they need. But to really differentiate yourself from the pack, enhance your health insurance benefits by offering subsidies that can be applied to gym memberships, regular massages or yoga classes. (A zen workforce is a happy workforce!)

3. benefits that reduce cost of living

If employees are willing to hop on over to your ship despite a lower salary, help them make each take-home dollar more valuable. Subsidizing a portion of their transportation and commuting costs, catering healthy lunches at the office and providing new equipment like laptops and smartphones will help reduce your employees' costs of living, thereby making a lower salary more manageable in their lives.

make salaries go further by covering some transportation costs, offering healthy in-office lunches and providing tech like laptops and smartphones.

4. training and professional development

Today's job seekers know that we're in a time of digital disruption and that new skill sets need to be developed to keep up. Show your employees that you're investing in their careers by offering training and professional development opportunities — either through in-house events or by covering the costs of certifications or other educational pursuits. (While tuition assistance may seem costly, there are tax benefits for employers: For example, companies can provide each employee up to $5,250 per year to apply to tuition for certain types of degree work — completely tax free.)

5. retirement savings contributions

With student debt top of mind for most of today's workforce, it's become harder than ever to start saving for retirement. Another way to show investment in your employees is to offer retirement savings accounts in which you match each dollar the employee contributes — usually up to three percent of their income — which, in turn, encourages employees to invest in their future, too.

6. additional vacation time

You never know what will tip the scales in your favor when you're deep in negotiations with top candidates, and sometimes it's as simple as an extra week of vacation time per year. In fact, research shows that after health benefits and flexible work schedules, more vacation time is the most coveted benefit job seekers look for in a new employer. Yes, you're bringing this valuable perk to the table in order to get the person on board, but that extra week will pay dividends over time as it will help to prevent burnout, ensuring that your new star stays relaxed and engaged with their work.

7. a sense of purpose and meaning

Today's workforce wants to find meaning in their roles and be able to contribute to a larger sense of purpose. So set yourself apart from your competition by making your company's mission and positive internal culture your biggest selling point. Help the candidate gain peace of mind in coming on board, knowing that they'll be part of an organization that values their hard work and contributions, promotes work-life balance and is ready to invest in their future success. (Get ahead of the game by speaking to this in each job description you post.)

attract candidates by making your company's mission and culture your biggest selling point.

more on how to hire

Now that you have a new arsenal of perks and benefits to use when attracting top talent, are you ready to learn more ways to strengthen your recruiting? Start off by making sure you're following the best hiring practices for your field and its most in-demand jobs. And once you're ready to start browsing candidates with the right skills needed for your open roles, head on over to our Find Employees portal.

In a perfect world, you would be supported by a robust team of recruiters working tirelessly to find the best candidates out there. But sadly, it's not a perfect world, and your small businesses — like many out there — relies on one dedicated HR generalist who, on top of your laundry list of duties, needs to single-handedly manage the full recruitment life cycle — from posting the open role to making the job offer and helping the new hire fill out paperwork on their first day.

in today's competitive market, top talent can receive and accept an offer in as few as 10 days.

So if you're one of those HR generalists who's flying solo, what can you do to stay in the game and ensure you're not only finding great candidates, but getting them to come on board? Here are five ways you can strengthen your recruitment and land the talent you need to help your business succeed.

So grab that cup of coffee (or the entire pot), and let's dive in.

1. set expectations with the hiring manager

Before you even publish the job description and conduct your first LinkedIn search, be sure that you and the hiring manager are aligned on what makes for a quality candidate. After all, when time is of the essence, you can't afford to screen dozens of candidates who ultimately may not fit the bill.

Get ahead of the game by having a "Hiring Manager Worksheet" available to your company's managers that makes your hiring workflow common practice — that way they can begin to anticipate your needs when they know they're going to have to hire in the near future.

A strong worksheet should cover these critical questions:

1. What are the primary responsibilities of the role you're hiring for?
2. What are the five most essential skills your ideal candidate should have?
3. What salary expectations will top talent have, and how can our company offer a compensation package that meets those expectations?
4. How can we interview candidates as efficiently as possible? Rather than holding multiple rounds, can we have one in-person interview with a small panel of people? Who should attend?

Having these questions documented and incorporated into your hiring process will ensure you and the hiring manager know exactly what to look for in a candidate and how quickly you need to move in order to keep top talent interested. This will be especially helpful in times of high-volume hiring and instances in which the hiring manager might be traveling, thus limiting in-person collaboration in this early stage.

work with the hiring manager to define the ideal candidate and set expectations for how quickly you need to move.

And to avoid reinventing the wheel, once you have the desired skills, qualifications and experience in place for the open role, start a database to archive this information so that it's readily available the next time you need to hire for a similar role.

2. entice your workforce to act as recruiters

When you're a one-stop shop for all things HR, you simply don't have the time to scour LinkedIn, attend networking events and sift through hundreds of resumes in order to identify top candidates. Even worse, you may gloss over a strong candidate because the only time you've had to read those resumes was at the end of a long day when you're at your most bleary-eyed.

But fear not, you actually have a small army of people eager to help you identify strong candidates: Your current workforce.

Tapping into your current employees' professional networks is an optimal way to build the talent pipeline you need — not just for the role you're recruiting now, but over the long term as well. No one can sell your company's culture and mission quite like your workforce, which is why 46 percent of candidates want to learn about your company's operations directly from your current employees.

What are the advantages to a "divide and conquer" approach to finding the best candidates?

• Your employees will be able to evangelize your company's culture, values and mission, to make sure the candidate will be a great fit if they're brought on board.
• Getting a referral from an employee who works closely with this role means they already have a strong idea of what will make for a successful candidate — whether it's an expert skill set, experience or even pure stamina.
• Receiving strong referrals means minimizing (or eliminating) the time you devote to screening resumes and weeding out those candidates who aren't qualified.

Not only will your employees feel empowered to play an active role in bringing new colleagues on board, but hiring referral candidates can also benefit your business in a number of ways:

• Referral candidates save an organization about $3,000 in recruitment costs per hire.
• They're 55 percent faster to hire, compared to candidates sourced through career sites.
• And they're likely to stay with your company for 25 percent longer.

3. prioritize internal recruiting and advancement

When you're strapped for time, it's easy to place too much emphasis on external recruiting and gloss over strong contenders for the position who may be right under your nose. After all, your ideal candidate may be that superstar you brought on board two years ago, who's been receiving rave reviews from their manager and is hungry for new challenges.

20% less likely to leave in their first two years than those sourced externally.

Building an internal recruiting program means advancing candidates who have not only provided value in their current roles, but are already familiar with the ins and outs of your company and its culture — a major plus, given today's trend of rapidly decreasing employee tenure. And when that promotion drives employee engagement and satisfaction with their work and your company, they'll stick around for longer, which means less hiring for you to do down the road.

So in addition to keeping institutional knowledge on board, fostering a workplace that rewards hard work and spurring employee engagement, internal hires can bolster your company's productivity and bottom line. Here’s how.

• Internal hires regularly outperform their colleagues recruited externally.
• They're 20 percent less likely to leave in their first two years.
• Their starting salary is an average of 18 to 20 percent less than that of external candidates.
• And they not only score higher on performance reviews, but are 61 percent less likely to be fired than external hires.

4. adopt recruiting technology to drive efficiency

Technology is your strongest ally when you don't have a team to support you. There's no reason to go it alone when there are a bevy of new technologies available to simplify your hiring process by eliminating many of the manual tasks you're currently taking the time to do.

For example, adopting an applicant tracking system (ATS), intelligent screening software or an AI for recruiting platform can eliminate the need to personally screen the hundreds of resumes you're likely to receive for an open role.

And given how quickly top candidates can leave the market (remember that 10-day stat we mentioned earlier?), add efficiency to the first round of your interview process by using on-demand video platforms to save you time scheduling phone calls and screening these candidates yourself.

screening resumes takes an estimated 23 hours of a recruiter's time for a single hire.

But look, we know how hard it can be to get the buy-in — and budget — from senior leadership needed to bring these tools on board. So here are some stats you can use when making the case for recruiting technology:

• Companies that have incorporated recruiting chatbots into their hiring process report higher levels of candidate engagement, faster hiring times and time saved thanks to task automation.
• After adopting recruitment technologies, insurance giant Esurance decreased their cost per hire 41 percent while improving their candidate experience by 36 net promoter score points.
• It takes an estimated 23 hours of a recruiter's time just to screen resumes for a single hire. (That's half your workweek!)

5. partner with a staffing firm

If you're flying solo at your company, you don't need the added stress of making the wrong hire, which can cost your business hundreds of thousands of dollars. So to maximize your reach, consider developing a partnership with a professional staffing firm. Staffing experts are just that: experts at building strong relationships with top talent — especially passive candidates — and matching companies with candidates who are the best possible fit.

In addition to gaining access to their nationwide pools of talent, a staffing firm's deep expertise in your industry will also add value to your overall hiring game. After all, you're not just hiring for one role today — you'll need to continue navigating the waters of an increasingly demanding job market in the months and years ahead.

Interested in learning more about how a staffing partner can help you find your next great hire and make you feel less like a party of one at a crowded restaurant? Head on over to the Randstad Learning Center to read about the ways a staffing firm can help strengthen your talent acquisition strategy and gain additional insights into making a great hire.

To get the talent you need to drive the success of your business, start thinking less about job boards and more about sourcing passive candidates — those who are generally happy in their current role and therefore aren't spending their free time combing online postings, but who could be very interested in the right opportunity when it presents itself.

with record-low unemployment and top talent leaving the market in as few as 10 days, every business is hungry to land top talent.

The great news is that these sought-after candidates make up about 70 percent of today's workforce. That's a lot more people who could be interested in your position! The not-so-great news? These pros are much tougher to source and attract. Since they're not actively looking for new work, you need to build a deeper relationship with them in order to pique their interest enough to jump ship. And that takes great finesse and a different type of engagement strategy.

Here's what to do:

Growth — as a sales leader, it's what you live for. Growth means new opportunities, new clients and, most importantly, serves as a key indication that your business is trending in the right direction — up.

But while growth can undoubtedly be good for reeling in new revenue, it can also cost you if you're not careful. If you don't scale your staff correctly, you could end up overpaying, underperforming and incurring additional staffing costs as you scramble to bring it all back into balance.

That's a lot of time and money you don't have to waste, so follow these steps to scale your team properly and prepare it for growth.

align with HR

You're good at finding new business. HR is good at finding new people. You're more alike than you think! So if it's been a while since your teams sat down to have a chat, then now's the perfect time to get reacquainted. 

In order to successfully scale your sales team for growth, you need to be able to predict your staffing levels. You don't want any headcount hiccups down the line, especially once your new initiative is in full swing. Hire too many people, and you'll end up having to reduce headcount. Hire too few, and your existing staff will become overworked, burned out and unable to provide adequate support.

the more detail you can give HR about your staffing needs, the smoother the hiring process will be.

As soon as you get the green light on a new growth initiative, set up a meeting with HR to communicate:

• Your vision for expansion: Detail your departmental goals for growth. What are you hoping to achieve? What does the ideal end-result look like for your team, and how does it fit into the company's growth strategy?

• The nature of the venture: Are you pursuing bigger clients, or branching out into a new territory or market — and at what scale? Will you need to establish a new field headquarters, or can sales ops be managed from your current location?

• Quantify your hiring needs: Can a few account executives get the job done, or will more management and operational support be needed? Look to similar past initiatives to arrive at a headcount estimate to give HR and see if their own calculations match. 

hire right the first time

When it finally comes time to hire, don't ignore soft skills. A candidates' selling style is worth just as much as the revenue they've generated over the years — especially if you're looking for sales people who can blend in with your team and hit the ground running.

When you have big plans in place, you don't have time to waste on poor-fit hires who don't mesh well with your team. Besides the high costs of replacement (which can be as much as 21% of an employee's annual salary) removing a new recruit hurts team morale and slows momentum.

replacing a bad hire could cost you 21% of an employee's annual salary.

Numbers are important of course, but if a seller's working style or personality don't gel with the rest of your team, then it's unlikely they'll be able to repeat their success with your company. To find the right fit:

• Address your team's gaps: Do you have more deal-closers than you know what to do with? If that's the case, try selecting for personalities more suited to lead nurturing or generation to address your weaknesses further up the funnel. 

• Understand your leadership style: How do you and your managers operate? Are there any commonalities in working style between your best sellers that could give you clues about the traits needed to succeed on your team?

• Include your team: Culture fit is a question of chemistry, so open up the interview process to other members of your team to get their opinions on candidates and their compatibility. 

build a lean, mean training machine 

You've figured out the numbers and found the right people, but the work is far from over. How well (and quickly) you and your team are able to get new hires up to selling speed is important to maintaining a steady growth rate. After all, you hired new people to make an impact. So the longer it takes for your new recruits to get into a position where they can start making a difference, the longer your business's needs will go unaddressed.

Organizations that formalized their onboarding processes were able to get 50 percent more productivity from their new employees, so there's a lot you could potentially be leaving on the table if you skip this step in your scaling strategy.

creating a standardized onboarding process could net you 50% more productivity from your new recruits. 

Here's what to do:

• Assign a point person: Or people, depending on the size of your hiring needs. If HR can hire or spare someone to lead onboarding and training, that's all the better. But if not, choose a leader from your team to own the process. 

• Outline your onboarding process: Work with your point person to cover everything you expect a new hire to know. Don't be afraid to deviate from some of the traditional onboarding guidelines. Every team is different, and knowing what to leave out can be just as important as knowing what to include, especially if you're trying to get new hires up to speed quickly. 

• Standardize and enforce: Once you or one of your managers have settled on a defined onboarding process, standardize it and stick to the script. Having an established onboarding process will save you time, and ensure your new recruits get the training they need to become productive members of your sales team.  

takeaways    

Scaling your staffing strategy to align with growth is challenging, but by following these steps and maintaining open lines of communication with HR, you'll be able to start adding new hires at a rate that's right for your business.

But scaling for growth is just one small part of a well-designed staffing strategy, and the more components you can cover in your hiring plan, the better apt your organization will be at finding and retaining talent.

Visit the Randstad Staffing Learning Center to get started. It's got everything you need to know about building your staffing strategy, scaling for growth and more.