Talent Network Group
Brookfield
Innovation: Temp Mission
www.talentnetworkgroup.com
Talent Network Group founder Sue Sattler didn’t set out to include temporary workers as part of the services her firm offers, but now she finds herself doing just that, while working on new ways to improve the experience of bringing on temporary help.
Brookfield-based Talent Network Group is a full-service talent acquisition firm. Sattler and her team do direct hire work, executive searches, managed recruitment and as of a year-and-a-half ago, temporary staffing.
“I never wanted to do temporary, believe it or not, because I always heard horror stories,” Sattler said.
When a large corporate client needed temporary help, Sattler decided to take the leap. Now, she’s launching Temp Mission (www.tempmission.com) as a way to streamline the process of finding a temp.
“Usually a temporary need is immediate,” Sattler said.
The idea is for Temp Mission to be like an Uber for temporary workers. Sattler recalled she didn’t quite get the potential for Uber when she first heard about it. “Why not just call a cab?” she thought.
“The difference was the immediacy,” she said. “Why not do that for temp staffing?”
Sattler recalled being in corporate human resources settings in which she would call an agency, tell it what she needed in a candidate, and the agency would try to find it for her.
“Oftentimes what they do is they get the order and then they go out and find people,” she said.
Temp Mission allows the corporate user to log on and browse the temps Talent Network Group has available. The user picks one or two in which he or she is interested. Sattler and her team are notified of the user’s interest and respond with the candidate’s bill rate and other relevant information.
“It’s a quick, easy, efficient way to order up a temp,” she said.
Sattler’s effort to improve the temp experience is right in line with why she started Talent Network Group in 2007. After years in human resources on both the agency and corporate side, including 10 years as a staffing officer at Park Bank, Sattler felt there was something missing.
“Honestly, I was always very disappointed in the recruiters I dealt with on the corporate side,” she said.
Temp Mission launched earlier this year and not all of the temps Talent Network Group has available are on the site yet. Sattler is currently aiming to offer a sampling of what is available and the focus is on people who would fit corporate or office roles, not manufacturing or labor.
Sattler said she believes one of the user benefits of Temp Mission is it can be done at any time. That means managing temp staffing could be done during off hours or while traveling.
“We’re excited about it for the technology of it,” she said.
Despite her initial hesitation to start providing temp services, Sattler said she is increasingly finding benefits of it. She said it works as another way to get people in the door at companies.
In one case, she had a 60-year-old female minority candidate with a “phenomenal” resume who was having trouble getting interviews. Sattler said people will, unfortunately, not give candidates a chance for a variety of reasons.
Sattler was able to place the woman with a large public company as a temp. The company loved her work, Sattler said, and after a year of temping there was room in the budget to hire the woman full-time.
The use of temporary workers has reached historic levels, especially as the labor market continues to tighten and full-time candidates aren’t as readily available.
“It’s insane,” Sattler said. “I can’t remember a market this tight.”
Staffing companies hired a total of 15.9 million temporary and contract employees in 2015, the highest number since 2000, according to the American Staffing Association.
Sattler said using temporary workers gives employers quick and easy access to help, along with the flexibility to work around potential budget constraints.
“Using temp staffing has become a workforce management strategy for them,” she said.
