Our co-founders recently spoke to Staffing Industry Review regarding PROVEN’s 2015 focus on the development and retention of internal staff to sustain growth. Read more on this growing trend below or click here to read the full article on Staffing Industry Review.

Grow Your Own: Focusing On Internal Staff 

Leslie Stevens-Huffman for Staffing Industry Review

Although 36% of employers plan to add full-time staff and 46% plan to hire temps and contractors this year, staffing industry recruiters will need superior skills and substantial experience to ring the register.

Growing talent shortages, expanding skill gaps, rising client expectations and the proliferation of passive candidates are just a few of the new-age trends that savvy executives hope to counter by increasing the knowledge and tenure of their internal recruiting teams.

“Experienced recruiters aren’t interested in switching jobs when times are good, because they’re making too much money,” says Louis Song, CEO and co-founder of PROVEN. “Poaching isn’t a viable option, growing our own talent is the next logical step in our development.”

“Most staffing firms hire 80 people and end up with 20,” said Ingram Losner, PROVEN’s co-founder and CFO. “But that strategy is neither sustainable nor scalable. We’re aiming for 100% retention of our top performers and the development of new leaders who can take on more responsibility.”

Continuous learning is what allows an organization to stay competitive in an ever-changing environment. Studies show a strong learning culture improves staff engagement and retention, enriches the customer and candidate experience, fosters sustainable growth and ultimately boosts business performance. Indeed, innovative companies like Boeing, IBM, Google and Apple are just a few of the juggernauts that attribute their long-term success to a strong learning culture.

But transitioning into a learning organization frequently requires a new approach and structural changes because the thirst for knowledge and the ability to grow people must be systemically woven into an organization’s DNA and infrastructure.

Here’s how several fast-growing firms plan to create a sustainable competitive advantage by morphing into full-fledged learning organizations.

Build a Learning Ecosystem

While many staffing firms provide new-hire training, it’s only one element in a vibrant ecosystem where people, resources and knowledge interact with each other in ways that foster continuous learning, knowledge sharing and the evolution of sustainable, repeatable processes.

For instance, PROVEN’s co-founders tied employee compensation to professional growth, creating a vital interactive link in their nascent ecosystem.

“This year, we gave our employees development goals in addition to financial targets because the two are inter- twined,” Song explains.

“And to make sure we’re all rowing in the same direction, a portion of our leaders’ bonuses are tied to the training and development of their people,” Losner adds.

Song and Losner initially assessed their staff ’s strengths and weaknesses in fundamental areas such as recruiting, account management and sales. Developing a baseline not only helped the co-founders spot knowledge gaps, it inspired the launch of PROVEN University.

PROVEN’s recruiters receive 22 hours of online training along with weekly instruction from in-house subject-matter experts on candidate marketing, client visits and techniques for screening and selecting specialized tech professionals such as data analysts or project managers. Since accountability is another critical ecosystem component, employees must affirm the assimilation of their newfound knowledge by passing a daily quiz.

Read full article: http://www.staffingindustry.com/site/Research-Publications/Publications/Staffing-Industry-Review/January-February-2015/Grow-Your-Own-Focusing-on-Internal-Staff?cookies=disabled#sthash.cBoeN8t7.dpuf