How can the right production employees be found?

A production employee is an employee in a world with many, many opportunities. Many industries, many different tasks in these industries and many specializations within them offer their own opportunities. What sounds so romantic and motivating, however, is less romantic for the individual employee. So the question arises, how can the jobs and vacancies be filled?

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes

What is the impact of the shortage of skilled workers in production?

The shortage of skilled workers is an old problem that the industry has been warning about for a long time. However, it is also a new problem, as it is becoming increasingly apparent and is making it difficult to service the growing number of orders in many industrial sectors. Ways must therefore be found to ensure that sufficient production workers can still be found.

However, the shortage of skilled workers is not just a problem in Germany. Employees with a good education are needed all over the world. The number of trainees has long been insufficient to meet the increasing demand in the future.

One reason for this is the trend towards more and more academization. More and more students are aiming to go to university rather than vocational school after graduating from high school. If we take the typical employee aged 30 as an example, 40% of them have a degree from a university. This means they are lost for most jobs within manufacturing.

There are various ways of dealing with this problem. For example, more girls and women are being encouraged to work in typically male domains. More workers are also being recruited from abroad and efforts are being made to increase staff pooling. The latter consists of temporary workers, contractors and freelancers, for example, who can be deployed wherever there is a need for workers.

Are companies still finding new workers themselves?

The shortage of skilled workers also means that companies are trying to avoid pooling. Instead of relying on workers from outside the company who are not always available as required, they want to retain them. This can be achieved through permanent employment.

To this end, companies also look for new employees on their own initiative. This personnel recruiting then consists of specifically approaching specialists whose expertise is needed in the company. However, this brings with it a problem. Your own company has focused on production. The entire technical expertise is focused on this. Now a new skill needs to be created. This consists of finding, approaching and recruiting potential employees.

This new competence also consumes resources. Employees who could be working in production are now busy finding ways to recruit new workers. Added to this are financial resources that are spent on advertising measures, for example.

If this recruiting is carried out properly on your own, then it definitely makes sense. This is especially true if sufficient and, above all, the right specialists can be found. In this context, it is also important to establish a bond with the company so that the new employees do not have to be quickly replaced by others. This is the case, for example, when recruiting career starters or lateral entrants.

A special bond can be achieved for these cases, for example, by promoting training and further education. This makes the company attractive to these groups of people and allows them to grow within it.

How does the recruitment of skilled workers for production work?

Recruiting skilled workers who already have professional experience, on the other hand, poses a particular challenge. They usually already have a job and need to be convinced to change jobs and join the company. This entails a much greater marketing effort.

Either way, however, a process must first be developed that extends from marketing to the selection of suitable employees. This means finding marketing channels, creating the marketing message and objectively defining selection criteria. Then it is a matter of screening the applicants according to the selection criteria and finding the best people among them.

This effort is often forgotten by smaller companies in particular, who see recruiting on their own as a way to save costs. In the end, however, it is always a question of weighing up the pros and cons. Does concentrating on the core business generate more revenue, which allows recruiting to be outsourced, or does it actually make sense to invest the company's resources in a new task that is not part of the core business?

How can personnel service providers make a contribution?

Many companies want to save themselves the effort of recruiting staff and hand over this work to an external personnel service provider. They can then either support their own HR department in finding new employees or take over the entire recruitment process themselves.

Recruitment agencies specialize in finding qualified workers. This enables them to find potential employees efficiently. This goes as far as being able to approach specialist staff who would otherwise not apply for a standard job advertisement. Conversely, they are also able to deal with a flood of applications and find suitable candidates among them.

The search can be conducted regionally or nationally. Even employees who are already in employment can be approached if the new job promises better conditions.

The skills of personnel service providers are no coincidence. They know the sectors, they have a pool of potential employees. They use various placement models and are integrated into valuable recruiting networks.

How do recruitment agencies place workers?

Personnel service providers usually use one of two models, depending on how quickly the workforce is needed and what qualifications they require. The first is direct placement and the second is employee leasing.

For the model of the Temporary employment in the production,Also known as temporary work, temporary employment usually involves the rapid placement of personnel. This personnel only has a low level of qualification and is often only needed for a short period of time. In this context, foreign workers, for example as temporary workers from Eastern Europe, often play an important role.

The Direct mediation on the other hand, aims to find well-qualified specialists or top personnel. The focus here is less on time and more on quality. Long-term employment relationships are also often sought for these employees.

If particularly highly qualified employees are sought, the personnel service provider also uses a special form of placement, headhunting. This form is very resource-intensive, time-consuming and requires a great deal of experience. This is why companies' internal HR departments often fail in this area.

Headhunters, on the other hand, have special databases and networks at their disposal. They also monitor job and career portals. This allows them to see what is in demand and where, and they can track which applicants can be found when needed. They can then approach them directly. This often applies even if the candidates themselves already have a job or are not looking for a new position at all.

How do recruiters select workers for production?

The aim of a recruitment agency is to find suitable employees. This means that, among the number of applicants, candidates must be found who match what the company hiring them needs. But how do recruitment agencies know what is important? To do this, they draw up a requirements profile.

The requirements profile is developed by the personnel service provider based on the specifications provided by the ordering company. This involves various aspects, such as qualifications, professional experience and, if necessary, additional qualifications. Soft skills, such as the ability to work alone or in a team, are also specified here.

The requirements profile now allows the recruitment agency to begin the search. To do this, they use databases, place advertisements and search in career networks. If an applicant matches the requirements profile, the recruitment agency proposes them as a candidate to the hiring company. The next step is the interview, in which the candidate himself convinces the potential employer.

Sometimes recruitment agencies are also involved in the interview. They also often carry out psychological tests to determine who is really suitable for the position. They can then derive recommendations for the hiring company from these tests.

What costs are associated with appointing a personnel service provider?

Recruitment agencies receive a success commission. This means that the commission is only paid if an employment contract is concluded between the hiring company and a candidate. If there is no employment contract, there are no costs. The commission itself is based on the future annual salary of the new employee. The applicants themselves do not pay for the placement.

Is it worth working with a recruitment agency?

Appointing a recruitment agency helps to relieve the burden on a company's internal HR department. Companies rely on this solution in particular when they need to process a high volume of applicants quickly or when there is a high fluctuation in the workforce.

They also use them when they want to find a suitable candidate quickly or are specifically looking for a highly sought-after qualification. Recruiters are then able to use their existing processes to efficiently achieve the desired result.

Recruiters have a huge pool of applicants at their disposal. They are also familiar with the industry and have their own networks, which allows them to quickly find employees with a wide range of qualifications.

Another important aspect is that the recruitment process itself is discreet. This means that the recruitment processes do not show the competition what is going on in your own company. In this way, companies avoid unrest among their own staff, who might feel threatened by the recruitment of new employees.

There are also a number of other advantages:

• This enables personnel service providers to fill vacancies quickly. This is particularly important when order peaks need to be processed.
• You can reduce the internal workload. They have established processes and pools that have to be developed and found by the internal HR department. Good recruitment agencies are also able to find a suitable candidate even in a difficult overall situation on the job market.
• In addition, recruitment agencies have in-depth expertise when it comes to employment law and how best to draft contracts. They are also able to find employees who are in high demand across regions and persuade them to change jobs.

How can employee leasing help with recruiting?

Temporary employment consists of a hiring company lending workers to the user company. This means that these workers do not become part of the permanent workforce but only work for the user company on a temporary basis, hence the term temporary employment.

The type of work, the remuneration and the hours to be worked are negotiated between the hirer and the lender. The user company is under no obligation to continue employing the leased workers afterwards. This allows it to process peak workloads efficiently.

The temporary workers remain employed by the temporary employment agency during the loan period. This means that the hirer only pays for the hours they actually work in their company. This also eliminates the expense of searching for applicants, the application process itself and the administration of personnel. All of this is the responsibility of the temporary employment agency or recruitment agency.

Temporary employment is therefore one of the most flexible ways to compensate for short-term staff shortages. It also offers the opportunity to fill existing vacancies in the main company on a permanent basis. The company initially employs the temporary workers for a trial period. If they prove themselves, the company takes them on as permanent employees.

This is a perfect solution for employers. They can try out potential employees in this way without any risk and at low cost. They can see how they work, from their qualifications and soft skills to their motivation.

This is also a good opportunity for the employee concerned to prove themselves and their skills. If the employee convinces the hiring company, it hires him permanently - often in a position that he might not have gotten through a traditional job search.

Conclusion

Even in times of a shortage of skilled workers, companies can try to fill existing vacancies themselves. If they are unable to do so, or if the effort involved is too great for success, they can turn to personnel service providers.

For their part, personnel service providers offer various solutions for different problems. These range from the classic placement of candidates to temporary employment and head hunting.

To this end, personnel service providers have their own databases, networks and processes that enable them to quickly find suitable candidates. They also provide legal support, for example in drafting employment contracts and employment relationships.