FirstConnect Solutions – Gig Working to Solve the Leaking Bucket

Journal: Human Resource Management

Founded in May 2020, FirstConnect Solutions is a Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) focused on providing recruitment and staffing solutions. When the pandemic hit recruitment activities across industries, FirstConnect Solutions demonstrated its mettle through robust growth within the first year, meeting clients’ expectations by successfully filling the few but challenging recruitment mandates. The pandemic environment also allowed the firm to hire inexperienced recruiters and train them on the job. The company motivated recruiters with monetary incentives linked to successful placement and a powerful reward and recognition program. 

While all employees appreciated the organization’s culture, FirstConnect continued to lose recruiters after they were painstakingly trained and had just started to become productive. To ensure client service did not suffer, FirstConnect hired gig recruiters, who were paid only for sourcing relevant candidate profiles through a milestone-based incentive system. The variability in quality and availability meant that this route of ensuring client satisfaction was not entirely reliable owing to an uncertain talent pool. The dilemma for FirstConnect was to identify the target demographic segments for its permanent workforce and to build its employer brand and employee value proposition to prevent attrition. Further, it needed to determine the percentage of work to be managed by gig workers without risking their client servicing capability.

This case raises the following crucial questions about the talent management strategies for MSME firms:

1. How do MSME firms manage their employer brand and attract and retain talent while trying to further develop their organization?
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using gig workers as a talent strategy?

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