Introduction

Talent is your company’s most valuable asset. The right people in the right positions drive your company’s success and growth.

For busy managers running multiple projects, finding, interviewing, and on-boarding candidates is distracting and a time sponge.

This is where a good working relationship with your tech staffing provider almost pays for itself. A good staffing partner should provide you with a quality talent pool, with the skill sets you need, and guide you in terms of:

Availability

Pricing

Realistic

Availability

Pricing

Realistic

Sounds simple, right? A good staffing partnership will be a long term relationship, based on trust, reliability, and communication. It needs to evolve and adapt to your needs. But, finding the right staffing agency is not easy.

The American Staffing Association (ASA) says:

With that many vendors to choose from, what’s the best one for you?

Gonzalo Deustua, CEO

1. What kind of staffing do you need?

To select the right agency, you should first have a clear vision of your staffing needs and objectives. As a guide, you should be able to answer the following questions:

What skill sets do you need?

Are you looking for temporary or permanent positions?

Are you looking to save time, money, or expand your available pool of talent?

What skill sets do you need?

Are you looking for temporary or permanent positions?

are you looking to save time, money, or expand your available pool of talent?

For instance, Stewart Butterfield, founder of Slack, had a clear idea of what profiles and requirements he needed to turn his idea into a reality, but only $60,000 to do so. Fortunately, he partnered with MetaLab, a large IT staffing vendor, to build an IT team capable of bringing his vision to life.

2. Does your partner have industry experience?

Experience is the IT recruiter’s not-so-secret sauce to finding the right candidate. A specialized staffing agency will understand your: industry trends requirements, challenges, competitors, market conditions, behaviors, and will have the resources and network to reach quality candidates.

A well-known energy company found this out the hard way. The company had a long-standing relationship with a generalist staffing agency. But when the vendor was tasked with filling a seemingly straightforward top-level executive assistant position, it failed miserably. It wasn’t until an industry-experienced agency was hired that the oil company was finally able to fill the requirement. For highly technical positions, avoid generalists at all costs.

For highly technical positions, avoid generalists at all costs!

3. Will your partner protect your brand?

The staffing vendor will work as an extension of your firm’s HR department, so you want to make sure they are aligned with your ethical and cultural values. Often, a candidate’s first impression of your firm is provided by your staffing partner.

Often, a candidate’s first impression of your firm is provided by your staffing partner

As a case, the selected staffing agency to build a consulting team for large-scale project involving highly confidential federal data had extensive experience working with US military and federal clientele: features that provide it with a professional and solid reputation.

4. Are they flexible?

Companies’ requirements change constantly. To successfully meet your needs, your staffing partner must be able to evolve. It needs to meet your new requirements, and be able to implement new work flows to do so.

Team

Specialized

Single

Several years ago, a leading Mexican urban transportation company was preparing to migrate to the digital world. But its lack of digital experience and talent was a barrier to overcome. After several strategic internal hires, the company partnered with a specialized IT staffing firm to build out its IT team capable of executing its digital transformation. As the company’s needs evolved over time to more complex technical roles, its staffing partner has had to adapt to provide tailored solutions to its needs.

5. Is their process good?

Top staffing companies spend years developing their prospecting, recruiting, and on-boarding processes. They also have invested in top tier applicant tracking systems (ATS), a database and marketing platform to track candidates and help employers find talent quickly and efficiently.

A Houston-based oil company was experiencing high turnover in several key departments, due to a lack of organization and consistency in its hiring processes. The wrong candidates were being hired, at tremendous cost to the company. To fix this situation, the company partnered with a staffing company to identify the right candidates, and provide a smooth on- and off-boarding process.