A Study of Professional Competencies of Recruiting Consultants in Temporary Staffing Agencies in Taiwan

Abstract

Temporary staffing industry (TSI) is a rapidly growing industry. This makes the role of recruiting consultants increasingly important for the success of temporary staffing agencies (TSA). Thus, it is critical that each TSA understands the necessary skills and abilities a recruiting consultant should possess. This research conducted a study of recruiting consultants in temporary staffing agencies in Taiwan to uncover the professional competencies they need to possess and apply in order to be successful in their jobs. This research used a three-stage research process to (1) document the value, job contents and the work processes of recruiting consultants, (2) build a competency model of recruiting consultants, and (3) establish norms of the competency level of current recruiting consultant workforce in temporary staffing agencies in Taiwan. This research applied the Delphi technique to collect the behavior indicators that excellent recruiting consultants exhibit, then collected data from 88 recruiting consultants of six sample firms using a survey questionnaire to measure the degree of existence of these behavior indicators. After applying the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on the observed data, this research generated six competences of recruiting consultants. They are professional knowledge and capabilities, customer service orientation, teamwork and cooperation, self-control ability, interpersonal communication, and learning ability. Next, using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), this research obtained the weight of each of the six competences from a select group of field experts. A weighted overall competency score was calculated for each recruiting consultant by first multiplying the score of each competence by the competence weight, then summing the scores of the six weighted competences. The weighted overall competency score was found to be significantly related to job performance scores of recruiting consultants in Pearson correlation analysis. In addition, regression analyses also showed that the weighted overall competency score was significant in predicting the job performance of recruiting consultants. The empirical evidence was a strong support for the validity of this newly developed professional competency model of recruiting consultants for the temporary staffing industry in Taiwan. Finally, after verifying the validity of this competency model, this research obtained the norms of recruiting consultants’ competency level by calculating the mean and the medium of each behavior indicator for the sample. The competency norms have great practical implications to TSA management. They can facilitate multiple human resource functions, such as recruitment and training. The norms can serve as a selection standard or a needs assessment questionnaire against which recruiting consultants’ current competency level can be evaluated.