Is it more important to save money or hire the best people?

I was talking to someone the other day about the move by large compines toward using a staffing VMS (Vendor Management Software), aka Black Holes. There is something that just seems wrong about a company that has hiring needs and wants to work with professional recruiting firms to find talent without the ability to speak to each other in the process and in a system that is driven by lowest bidders winning.

I think the company with with best people wins and they cost more not less. You get what you pay for in people and in service.

What do you think?

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Permalink Reply by Ken Forrester on January 21, 2010 at 10:26am

Big corporations make logical, rational, self-interested decisions that weigh costs against benefits to maximize value and profit to stakeholders. The problem is that people make decisions on behalf of corporations and they tend to be more willing to take risks to prevent loss than to increase revenue. The VMS staffing model is simply sold as a solution to appease corporate decision makers. Will it increase corporate revenue by delivering top talent, probably not. But it certainly is a no-brainer decision.

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Permalink Reply by Slouch on January 21, 2010 at 10:50am

You are right Craig. The thing about these vms systems is that it solves the problem for recruiters who don't want to do business development and it solves the problem for companies who do not want to talk to recruiters. It solves problems on both sides but it's not solving the same problem for both sides and that sometimes is where it all falls apart. I don't know how I could have ever over come objections and negotiated the best possible starting salary and package for a candidate if I did not have regular dialogue with the hiring manager. Everyone is trying to be efficient and it's easy to see why companies look at these vendor management systems as efficient and it is I suppose when you look at it one way but it's the wrong way. It becomes inefficient when it comes to getting the right person in on time through a recruiting firm. I remember terminating all agreements I had with clients way back when some of them started using peopleclick and required my firm to use it as well.

reminded me of this post I wrote a while back.