In today’s economy, you’ve got to have great people to be successful. Duh, right? That’s an obvious statement that’s easy to say, but much more difficult to actually put into practice.

Why? Well, unless you’ve had your head in the sand the past couple of years you also know there’s this thing called a labor shortage going on. Well, not so much a labor shortage as a qualified labor shortage, because if companies wanted to hire potheads I think they could pretty much fill all their spots tomorrow (although I’m not sure how much actual work would get done).

But you don’t want druggies, or losers, or slackers, or people who say they’ve been working at John Deere the last five years when they’ve actually been working the prison kitchen during their five-year armed robbery stint.

No, growing businesses want the best people and they want them yesterday. Problem is, they don’t always know where to find them or how to reach them for a reasonable price. That’s where staffing agencies come in! We’re the matchmakers of the business world. We grease the wheels between businesses and job seekers and bring them together in a way that develops more meaningful and lasting relationships than would otherwise exist. We make hiring easy, so you can focus on what you do best.

If you’re a business owner or manager tasked with the difficult job of finding the right people for YOUR jobs, here are three key things you can save by utilizing a staffing agency for your hiring needs.

Save money

Try posting a job, any job, to a job board that will actually bring you enough qualified candidates to allow you to choose someone instead of hiring the first person who walks in with a shirt on. It’s not cheap! If you want to spend even more, run a classified ad or get the word out with TV or radio. Advertising is expensive, especially if you’ve only got one or two jobs to fill.

And to make matters worse, what happens when you spend all that money to find that perfect candidate only to have that new employee quit on you in two months? It’s back to the drawing board because chances are all your other candidates have found work elsewhere.

The thing is, staffing agencies are ALWAYS in hiring mode, because if we’re not hiring for you, we’re hiring for someone else. And that’s a good thing for you because when you do need us we’ll put our well-greased wheels – our massive databases, our job board subscriptions, our ongoing advertising campaigns, and our reputation in the community as a source for jobs – all in motion for you.

That’s not the only way you’ll save money, of course. When you hire the right candidate the first time you’ll save significantly on training and onboarding costs, not to mention the tremendous value the right employee will add to your bottom line.

And if your business is seasonal and you need to lay off from time to time, utilizing a percentage of your workforce as temporaries will save unemployment costs and minimize the effect on your full-time workers. After all, WE can try to find them work elsewhere!

Save time

Suppose you’ve put a boatload of money into advertising and have a list of candidates. Now it’s time to sit down and screen through the weeds to get to the interviewable candidates. Next, it’s on to conducting interviews, then background checks, reference checks, and finally, after you’ve chosen someone, drug testing, and onboard processing.

Then, after they quit in a week or two because they’ve got enough money to buy cigarettes (sadly this type of thing isn’t uncommon, especially if your job is entry-level), you’ve got to do it all over again except you still have to send payroll taxes to the appropriate governmental agencies on someone you’d much rather forget about.

We do this all the time, and we’re good at it. We know who the good people are because not only have we become pros at reading people, chances are we’ve used someone on another temporary assignment who’s just itching to come and work for you. We have established systems in place that are designed to sort through the chaff to find the wheat in a hurry, and we can conduct this whole process a lot better, cheaper and definitely faster than you can!

Save risk

Everyone wants as safe an environment as possible for their employees, but the odds of someone getting hurt are drastically increased at the beginning of ANY job when the new employee is just learning the ropes. That’s where a staffing agency can really help mitigate risk, because if someone does get hurt within that first 90 days the workers compensation is on us, not our clients.

That’s not to say we don’t expect our clients to maintain a safe work environment and give our temporaries the best possible chance to stay safe on the job, of course. It also doesn’t mean we’ll send anybody just to fill a job order. In fact, in order to keep our worker comp mod in check, we’ve GOT to screen carefully (which is also a benefit to our clients!).

It does, however, mean that paying a staffing agency a modest, ongoing premium acts as a sort of insurance of its own to mitigate risk and keep those workers comp mods in check.

I’m not here to promise the world or even guarantee you’ll get perfect employees every time you utilize a staffing agency. Obviously, we’re people too and we make mistakes and overlook things just like anyone would. There are also definitely rogue agencies out there that give our industry a bad name. But on the whole, we’re good at what we do, and we fill a much-needed role by bringing great businesses and great job seekers together in a way that benefits everyone involved.

So, if you’ve never used a staffing agency before, why not give us a try and see the difference staffing can make on your peace of mind and bottom line!

This post originally appeared on Staffing Talk.