Cleveland HR firm adds recruiting division to help clients find talent

By Mary Vanac  –  Staff Reporter, Cleveland Business Journal

Mar 10, 2022 Updated Mar 11, 2022, 4:47pm EST

ConnectedHR, the human resources consultancy in Cleveland, has launched an employee recruiting division to help clients find the talent they need during what many are calling the “Great Resignation.”

A revised 41.5 million Americans quit their jobs from March through December of last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s an average revised quit rate of 2.8%, which accelerated to 3% in November and December, the bureau reported.

“The number of Americans quitting has now exceeded pre-pandemic highs for eight straight months, as employers, especially in low-wage sectors, are struggling to fill open positions,” reported Statista, the market, and consumer data website.

D’Agostino and his colleagues at ConnectedHR had seen the need for a dedicated recruiting service prior to the pandemic, but “Covid made it 10 times worse,” he said.

Recruiting employees from executives to manufacturing line workers became so burdensome to small and mid-sized business clients last year that D’Agostino started ConnectedTALENT to offer professional recruiting support and services.

Because HR management and HR recruiting are different disciplines that require different skillsets, D’Agostino hired Tameka White, a professional who had 16 years of talent acquisition and recruiting experience, as his division’s recruitment services director.

Like ConnectedHR, ConnectedTALENT employs a fractional model that is well-suited to and affordable for small- to mid-sized companies, D’Agostino said.

That means his company’s HR or talent professionals work at client sites a certain number of hours per week or month, getting to know client businesses as if they were employed there, he said.

And rather than charging a contingency rate for its recruiting services — most recruiting firms charge between 25% and 35% of the first year’s salary for the job they are filling — ConnectedTALENT charges a fee for its recruiting services, D’Agostino said.

“We butter our bread with all the fractional HR work in the projects that we do,” D’Agostino said. “So when we got into the talent acquisition space, we wanted to do it differently than what was being done in the market.”

You can read the original article here.