Everything You Need To Know About Administrative Staffing

Your administrative staff are an essential part of the workforce. They ensure that your business runs smoothly by successfully executing different administrative tasks at the workplace. Your in-house administrative workforce or a staffing partner like OLX People with handles the intrinsic clerical and organizational tasks including logistics, record keeping, and communications to ensure that all the back end tasks get done properly to promote efficiency and productivity within the organization.

What is administrative staffing?

Administrative staffing is defined as the process of scouting, sourcing, screening, interviewing, selection and onboarding of skilled staff to handle the different administrative tasks at the office.

While administrative staffing can be time-consuming, an understanding of the basic hiring tips for administrative personnel could help you effectively recruit administrative staff.

Top tips for administrative staff recruitment

Here are the top tips that you need to follow for effective recruitment of administrative staff.

1. Assess your staffing requirements

Before recruiting a new administrative professional, you need to first examine and determine the administrative needs of your business. This step would allow you to identify the activities which need administrative support, the required skills and the kind of candidate who would be best suitable for the open position. This would lay the foundation for planning an effective recruitment strategy, determining the appropriate compensation, offering training and doing performance reviews.

The general questions that you need to consider while assessing staffing requirements include:

• What are the job duties that require support?
• Do you require part-time or full-time support?
• Do you need coverage on specific days in a week or a specific number of times in a day?
• What kind of job experience or education should the ideal candidate possess to become eligible for the vacancy?
• Does the position require any specific skills?
• What kind of candidate would be a culture fit for the company?

2. Write the job description

After assessing the staffing requirements, the next thing to do is to draft a detailed job description. In essence, a JD is a written narrative that provides details of the job duties and responsibilities of the position. A great job description advertises your open job positions, communicates your requirements and expectations to the candidates and defines the performance standards that would be used in conducting performance assessments.

A comprehensive job description must have a proper “Job Summary” followed by :

• Job Title
• An extensive list of job duties and responsibilities
• Define the supervisory, budgetary, and decision making authority
• Highlight the requisite skills, knowledge, education and experience

3. Publicize the job openings

To attract the right candidates for the job, you will need to let the job market know that you are hiring for a specific job position. Review your job description to understand what kind of candidates you need to target. This will help you identify your target audience. You need to then advertise your open job position to this target audience. Advertising and publicizing the job position is the best way to let your prospective candidates know that you are actively searching for candidates for a specific job role. Publicizing your job position is the best way to efficiently hire candidates for the job.

Here are some of the ways in which you could reach out to prospective candidates:

• Reach out to your network, connect with your contacts and your colleagues and tell them about your open job position that you want to fill.
• Post an ad in the local newspapers, or on prominent job search sites on the internet.
• You may even post your open job positions on the professional website
• Use the services of the local job placement centres as well as local trade schools and colleges.
• A few administrative positions might require specific business training and education.
• Utilise the services of the staffing agency or an external employment service. This option is highly feasible when you want to fill multiple positions on short notice.

4. Determine salary and benefits

Employee compensation includes both direct payments (such as salary, wages, incentives, etc) and indirect payments (such as insurance benefits, time offs etc). While deciding on the compensation for the job position, consider the factors that you could equate it to, such as other job positions in the office and compensation for similar positions in other companies in your domain.

Determine the necessary skills, the role’s complexity, the effort and time commitment required to perform the duties. If the position is already existing, then you could use the last drawn salary as the baseline, to begin with, and then adjust as required.

While developing the salary compensation for new job positions, acquire additional data before finalising the package. Conduct a survey of the market and find out what other employers in your area are paying their staff for similar job roles. Doing some search on different packages will provide valuable data on the prevalent salary packages among different companies for the said job role. This will help you establish equitable salary packages for the administrative positions in your company. Your compensation should be attractive for the candidates, at the same time, it should not dig a hole in your finances.

Benefits of working with an administrative staffing agency

Among the best and most effective ways of discovering the right administrative staff is to associate with an appropriate staffing agency that specializes in administrative and office staffing. The main advantages of an administrative staffing agency are:

• Reduced hiring time and cost

Staffing agencies are experienced in optimizing your recruiting resources and the time required to find the right candidate for the job. It helps you to streamline your hiring process making it more effective. By outsourcing different hiring activities, such as interviews and background verifications to a staffing agency, the company could make the best use of their time by focusing on the improvement matters of your business that drive growth and profitability. This will increase your competitiveness in the market.

• Increased candidate outreach

Administrative staffing firms will expand your sourcing and hiring efforts and build a credible candidate pool by reaching out to a wide candidate base. They could help you access the kind of talent that were earlier inaccessible, including qualified candidates, passive candidates that may be currently employed but are open to different job opportunities. Such agencies have an effective connection in the industry which can allow you to get the best-fit candidates for the job, and could help you determine the experience necessary for different administrative job positions.

• Increased talent retention

Yes, even the administrative staff is prone to attrition or turnover. Administrative staffing firms work with employers to identify what type of candidates would be best suited for the position and possess the right expertise that would help them succeed in the future. Staffing firms carry extensive experience in assessing different admin candidates, therefore, they can efficiently source, screen and help recruit the right candidates for your administrative job positions.

A candidate with the right experience and knowledge about the culture and values of the company will find it easy to adapt to the company culture. They could associate themselves with the work environment of the company. This will lead to a happy employee and improve your employee retention rate.

Administrative staffing agencies can effectively handle the short-term as well as the long term admin staffing needs of your organization. They are the best resources that could allow you access to the best talent without having to speed excessive time and resources on the recruiting process.