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Published:

July 2, 2023

What are HR services, recruitment services and staffing services

Vasco

What comes to your mind when you hear or read “HR”? What about “HR department”? I guess you mean “human resources”, “personnel”, or “personnel department”. And what do you associate the word combination “HR services” with?

Let us add more details to these words and phrases.

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Who deals with HR services in general?

Recruitment agencies

Staffing agencies

HR agencies

HR services, provided by various organizations

Final words

Who deals with HR services in general?

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No one, I think, will dispute my assertion that HR is a vast concept. It combines various areas of providing services to businesses related to personnel.

Perhaps, the narrowest concept of all is the HR department. In a few simple words, it is a team of a company’s employees who manage the enterprise’s staff “life cycle”, which includes sourcing, hiring, onboarding, training, and firing employees, plus, of course, controlling their benefits.

But I would like to consider the range of HR services in which various companies specialize. First, I would single out recruiting, HR, and outstaffing agencies. What exactly do such companies specialize in?

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Recruitment agencies

A recruiting agency is a kind of intermediary in the labor market, an internal business that provides services to employers in the search and hiring of personnel.

It is conditionally possible to divide recruiting agencies into three broad categories:

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agencies that provide services to employers in the search and recruitment of personnel;
agencies that help job seekers find jobs;
agencies that provide services to both employers and job seekers.

The main range of work in which such an agency specializes is managing the recruitment process and providing its customers with candidates for permanent, temporary, or contract work, including such recruitment processes as application tracking, recruitment process outsourcing, and others.

Recruiting agencies usually deal in specific fields of business, such as accounting, management, or, like OnHires, IT.

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The useful materials that clarify how to build efficient recruiting & HR processes

Outstaffing agencies

An outstaffing, or staffing, agency provides its employees with required qualifications to the customer for a certain period to perform a particular scope of work that cannot be done by the regular employees of the customer company. Such agencies cope with temporary staffing and dedicated teams.

Depending on the terms of the contract, the staffing agency’s employees can be provided under different conditions:

the outstaffing agency’s employees come under the entire subordination of the customer’s project team and operate as the other team’s members;
the outstaffing agency’s employees come under the partial subordination of the customer’s project team and perform only some of the tasks with the other team’s members;
the outstaffing agency’s employees remain subordinated to their agency and separately perform certain work for the customer. In this case, all the responsibility for the outcome lies with the outstaffing company. While in the first two cases, the responsibility for the project’s result is passed to the customer.

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HR agencies

These agencies provide the broadest range of services. Their services include, in addition to hiring employees, various HR consulting services for optimizing the HR sector of the customer company, human resources audit, recruiting audit, recruiting management solutions, HR software, employer branding development, or its internal and external parameters. In short, an HR agency deals with everything related to the staff.

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HR services, provided by various organizations

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As we have already identified above, many diverse companies offer various HR services that are somehow connected with personnel.

I will try to list some of the most common and significant HR services, in my opinion. I believe it would also be helpful to divide them into categories:

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Recruiting consulting services:

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Recruitment process outsourcing.
Sourcing and screening.
Interviews and reference checking.
Psychometric audit.

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HR department structuring and managing consulting services:

Talent consulting.
HR audit.
Organizational structure redesign..
HR outsourcing.
Reviewing, redesigning, and introducing refreshed HR operational policies and guidelines.
Performance and reward management policy.
Professional employer organization, including payroll, benefits, and compensation management.
Recruiting audit.
Employer branding.

Staffing services:

Professional development consulting services:

Self-awareness, self-confidence, self-esteem, and professional growth.
Career development.
Interview preparation.
Resume and motivation letter creation.

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Final words

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It is not easy to draw a clear line between businesses involved in the HR services provision. An HR agency can provide a broad range of recruiting services. And a recruiting agency can supply high-quality consulting services regarding effective optimization of the HR department workflow.

Therefore, my conclusion and recommendation are as follows: when choosing an agency where you would like to apply for HR services, focus on its reputation and previous customers’ reviews, carefully study its official website and social media profiles before making your final decision.

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What are HR services, recruitment services and staffing services