Are services such as LinkedIn, oDesk, and Elance, viable alternatives to staffing agencies for SMBs?
Answers
Depends on the workforce strategy you have for the organization and the skills of your internal staff who will manage these processes. With oDesk and Elance you will save costs in agency fees and presumes you will use predominately contingent workforce (with some converting to full-time hires). Linkedin also has a good number of independent consultant pool of resources and you can contact candidates for directly depending on your subscription. Whether an SMB can leverage these lower cost solutions will depend on the process owner of these supplier relationships and having strong project
Absolutely. As Malak points out, you will save agency fees, and he makes some other very valid points.
To be fair I am not a fan of recruitment/employment agencies.
In any event, whether you do the actual search or not, you still need to vette whomever is presented to you as a possible employee. Search firms don't have any special or magic software that they wave over applicants.
I second Wayne's comment. Amen brother!!
Generally I would advocate using LinkedIn as a go-to recruitment resource - almost cost free and the pool is endless. It takes some skill to really know how to find the right candidates and connect with them, however.
For more senior positions, I think a good retained search firm can add value by unearthing, screening and presenting candidates that you otherwise might have difficulty connecting with and attracting. But even in this case I would not sell the potential of LinkedIn short.