The startup and tech market has been changing at the speed of light in recent years. Businesses worldwide are realizing the value of a more collaborative and less restrictive approach.
This has led to the emergence of various niches such as Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and a whole lot more.
One of the newest trends in this market is Talent as a Service (TaaS), also known as Team as a Service, which involves outsourcing talent requirements to third-party organizations. These organizations specialize in connecting businesses with top talent based on their unique needs, thereby offering various benefits in terms of the time and cost to hire.
How beneficial can this approach be? What are its drawbacks? In this guide, we take you through everything you need to know about Talent as a Service and tell you how viable an option it is for your business.
The Benefits of Taas for Businesses
In this section, we look at three primary benefits of Talent as a Service in today’s competitive marketplace.
1. Significant Reductions in the Cost of Hire
TaaS refers to dedicated talent acquisition and staffing solutions that spend all their time and energy connecting businesses with the right talent based on their needs.
While some businesses might rely on an in-house hiring manager or talent acquisition team, these teams also have many responsibilities to balance. As a result, their ability to devote all their time to hiring the right talent is limited.
On the flip side, a talent acquisition service makes hiring candidates their primary goal, thereby delivering quicker results that are best suited to your business needs and goals.
Statistics show that they spend upwards of 60-70% of their time networking with candidates across various niches. After all, time is money, and the quicker you hire the candidates you need, the quicker you can train and put them to work.
2. You Get the Best of Talent from across the World
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have led to businesses being a lot more open to hiring talent from across the world.
As a result, businesses now have access to a wider net of suitable candidates. However, as mentioned earlier, dedicating a significant amount of time to talent acquisition can be tricky for an in-house specialist.
This is where the vast network of a TaaS organization can come in handy, as they are best suited to connect you to the cream of the crop. With their worldwide networks, these agencies are very well suited to ensuring you only get the best candidate for your organization’s needs and culture.
3. You Benefit from an Understanding of the Latest Hiring Trends
While it goes without saying that you would undoubtedly have a good understanding of the trends in your specific niche, you may not have the same expertise when it comes to hiring.
Third-party firms specializing in staffing are always up-to-date with the latest trends in hiring and thus know how to target the right set of potential candidates.
This expertise also allows them to reach out to passive candidates who may not respond to a job posting, especially if they seem to have the right skills to help your organization meet its goals.
The Challenges of TaaS for Businesses
In this section, we take a look at three of the key challenges that the process of hiring candidates via TaaS services throws up.
1. Shorter Training Periods for Contract Workers
TaaS firms often cater to businesses that require candidates for short-term projects. These candidates could either be hired for a single project or a contract. This offers businesses a great deal of flexibility as both the business and the candidate know the scope of their partnership beforehand.
However, the flip side of this arrangement is that temporary or contract workers are exposed to shorter training periods, which can often be a challenge, especially when dealing with more technical projects.
The typical learning and training curve thus goes out the window, with team leads and hiring managers having less time to familiarize the new hire with the organization’s operations.
2. Team Bonding and Company Culture May Take a Hit
As mentioned earlier, businesses are opening themselves up to the idea of hiring remote employees through TaaS agencies. While this offers significant cost benefits, it can take a toll on team bonding within the organization.
This is because most of the interaction between the remote employee and the rest of the team is limited to their work.
Further, not having the employee work from within the primary workspace can also dilute the company’s culture, as the new employee isn’t exposed to what it offers. The organization slowly becomes a more robotic space.
3. An Overall Lack of Employer Branding
Employees these days pay immense focus to an organization’s internal culture when making a professional decision.
As a result, employers, too, have had to ensure they make their workplaces more engaging while ensuring a good work-life balance for their employees. Further, employees’ mental health has also become an aspect that businesses are now assessed on.
In this context, employers are making painstaking efforts to ensure they brand themselves well through all their marketing channels. Statistics show that 55% of recruitment professionals already proactively focus on employer branding.
This is where one of the downsides of outsourcing your staff augmentation to a third party comes to light – employers lose control of their organization’s branding.
It takes the right TaaS agency to understand how to ensure the company’s culture is highlighted to potential candidates, but finding the right fit can be a challenge.
In Conclusion
The TaaS business model has become one of the key trends in the world of hiring off late and for some remarkable reasons. It offers plenty of benefits to organizations that don’t have the time or the resources to carry out the hiring process themselves. From reducing the cost and time to hire to accessing a wider talent pool, the list is endless.
However, there’s also a flip side to this coin, and outsourcing your hiring needs to a third party can have drawbacks and challenges. As a result, businesses must take a considered approach to hiring a TaaS agency to understand whether or not it’s the right fit for them.