Open hiring is a strategy that forgoes resumes, interviews, and background checks and focuses on a job seeker’s ability and willingness to work. Dollars spent on traditional recruiting and screening – estimated at $4,100 per employee – are instead invested in training and supportive services. This approach is especially well-suited to hiring front-line workers in light industrial and retail/customer service settings, and offers employers a way to attract overlooked talent and diversify their workforce.

Open hiring, used successfully by Greyston Bakery, The Body Shop, and other businesses, has much in common with the alternative staffing approach to supply employers with motivated candidates eager for a chance to prove themselves, and support those individuals to succeed while they demonstrate their abilities and ambition on-the-job.

A new article from Harvard Business Review makes a compelling business case for open hiring and outlines four elements essential to effectively using this approach. Two elements - worker accountability and a worker support system - are inherent to the alternative staffing model. Alternative staffing businesses help employers understand and respond to factors that drive worker performance issues, and help workers access resources to overcome personal barriers to success.

With this capacity and expertise, alternative staffing operators are well-positioned to communicate the benefits of open hiring to employers and help them rethink and change how they source and invest in entry-level workers. In the new year, as businesses strive to be more inclusive, this message is especially relevant.