News & Events

By Mac Smith, Director of Marketing

Why do clients of staffing firms never think that those firms can, and will, do executive searches? Does it have something to do with organizational hierarchy? Maybe it is just plain snobbery as in, “C-suite executives are not staff.”

After all, executives have offices and staff have cubicles. The same people that find you candidates for the cubicles don’t have the same skills to find candidates for the offices. Right? Maybe this lack of belief in the staffing firm to do executive search is the fault of the staffing firms.

“Hello. What does your company do?”

“Hi. We are a staffing firm that specializes in temporary, temp-to-hire and direct-hire placement services. Oh, and we also do executive search.”

No! No you don’t. Executive search is direct-hire placement!

Yes. You read it right. Executive search is direct-hire placement. Is executive search so very special it needs its own firms and approaches? I don’t believe so and this sets me apart from some at our firm.

We do it all; direct hire, temporary assignment, temp-to-hire and executive search. The fact that we are a full service firm continues to have issues with our company branding.

I pull my hair out when a client says, “You do all our temps. I did not even think of asking you about completing our search for a CFO.”

Really? Did we do something wrong? We tell you four times a year EVERYTHING we do. Our client relationships continue to convince me that organizations believe: Staffing ? Executive Search. I think the reason they think this is because they think hiring an executive is harder and more important than hiring a mid or entry-level employee.

But we are all HR professionals. We know that the executive wing really carries only slightly more weight in the performance of the organization’s mission, as does the rest of the staff. It is also not harder to hire an executive. It just takes longer because their relative depth of experience requires additional review time than that of an entry-level employee.

The main reason it is treated with such special gloves is because of the cost. The twenty percent fee for hiring an IT manager is not has much as hiring a CEO of a $500 million nonprofit. Everyone understands that part. Does the high cost mean it needs special gloves used by an (wait for it) EXECUTIVE search firm?

Think about it. When the CEO announces retirement what do organizations do? Do they call Dawn, the lady that has filled dozens of temp jobs for them over the past ten years and direct-hires at the mid-management level including that great executive assistant that everyone loves? Do they consult the staffing firm that has provided temps for the front desk after a call at 9:00 P.M. the night before? You know the firm that knows their organization inside and out. The firm that understands their culture and the personality needed to successfully work there.

No. They do not. They can’t do that. This is an EXECUTIVE SEARCH! This person is getting a corner office and car allowance for crying-out-loud.

But wait. What about Dawn? The lady from the staffing firm that has done so well providing solid temporary and full time staff for the organization. She understands the culture of the organization so well that they don’t even really look at the resumes any more. They just send her the job description and a good candidate appears, does the job, supports the mission and gets paid. They even hired some temps full-time because they were so good. Can her firm complete the EXECUTIVE search?

I bet they can.

By Patty Hampton, CSP, Managing Director Staffing Services/Executive Search Consultant

 After reading 10 Things Employment Recruiters Won’t Say by Will Swarts, I want to set the record straight on a few points from my perspective and how I run a staffing firm.  I appreciate Swarts calling out staffing firms on their deficiencies, but he’s wrong on a few points. My background on this topic is thus; I have been a candidate with a staffing firm and unemployed in my professional career. I also have managed the staffing firm, Nonprofit Staffing Solutions, for almost a decade.

I want to begin by stating that not all agencies are the same. I personally do not use the term headhunter because it has evolved into an ugly and negative connotation. I prefer to use the term staffing consultant. Also, I was disappointed by the author’s choice of facts, but then we do have to sell and increase readership by any means necessary.

There is no such thing as a “better” way to find a job in today’s market.  I believe all job seekers should have a staffing consultant working on their behalf while looking for opportunities on their own. Staffing consultants not only serve as another pair of ears and eyes for a job seeker, but are a viable resource that can also skill market, secure interviews and create bridges where none may have existed.

Swarts did miss a few statistics in his opening point (There are better ways to find a job). According to the American Staffing Association, U.S. staffing companies employ more than two million temporary and contract employees each day—and 11 million over the course of a year. Also, if you look into the stats provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, you will also find that the staffing industry will add more new jobs in the next six years than any other industry. So, if I were a job seeker, I would have to validate my own experiences with a staffing firm, before I take his advice. Staffing agencies are not only putting people back to work and serving as a bridge to permanent employment, but we have proven on a daily basis that we are a viable employment resource now and in the future.

My heart goes out to the media advertising executive that Swarts mentioned in his second point (We don’t work for you). Again, not all agencies are the same. I can tell you that when a candidate is fully vetted, salary should never be treated as an afterthought. Candidates deserve to know up-front the relationship a staffing firm has with a client and the negotiable salary range for a position if they were retained or conducting a contingency search.

Swarts also wrote about how recruiters work for the hiring company and their allegiance lies with the client and not with the candidate. Again, not all agencies are the same. Most staffing consultants look for a win-win solution for the client and the candidate. This is what I term as a balanced approach. Meeting the client’s expectations and facilitating a negotiated salary that both candidate and client can work with not only makes sense, it is a matter of integrity and client loyalty. When you are in compensation discussions with the client at the kickoff of the hiring process most staffing consultants that I know do not use the “client-centered” approach. This business is about building and leveraging relationships. The candidate and the client experience will be different, but in the end, the staffing consultant’s main goal should always be focused on the integrity of the process and never compromising one deal for another.

I tend to agree with Swarts’s third point (Until a year ago, I was a car salesman) with the exception of one caveat. Through a little research he will find that today quite a few programs require staffing and HR professionals to purchase coursework materials prior to being qualified to take the exam for a certification designation. In the staffing world, we take certifications seriously. Certifications are about dealing with the federal and state laws that impact a firms business, protecting rights of candidates, employees and providing guidance to clients on co-employment obligations and responsibilities. A staffing firm that cares deeply about its clients and the candidates that are recommended to those clients is engaging in best practices to set themselves apart. Certification is one way to accomplish this separation.

After calling a few people, I can confirm that his fourth point (The job we advertised may not exist) still exists today with some agencies and this truly saddens me. I see no point for this madness. Like he said, this is misleading and hurts anyone engaged in a career search that is desperately trying to secure an opportunity. 

Swarts’s fifth point (We already know quite a bit about you) actually scares me! My goodness, yes, there’s probably quite a few agencies engaged in this type of recruiting and pre-employment practice. My best advice – BEWARE. There are a variety of state laws concerning what information can be used during the pre-employment process. I’ve witnessed hiring managers using Google and Facebook, as well as other social media sites, to investigate applicants. There is already some case law that one can refer to, but I believe it is just a matter of time before we see federal employment laws about this practice.

I have a few words of caution for Swarts when he quotes independent career consultants in this sixth point (Our jobs aren’t so hot either), validate what you write before it goes to print. There are a few small niche market staffing firms that actually don’t have to compete with the bigger, national and international firms. Being the managing director of a small staffing firm myself, I can tell you that sometimes great things including career opportunities come in small packages! Our niche market is the nonprofit sector. When you have a portfolio of business that can make a difference in a big world, suddenly you don’t look or feel so small. Plus, 2010 is turning out to be the biggest year in our firm’s history.

Concerning point seven (You’re at the mercy of a computer), there are still some staffing consultants that are old school and know how to source and network in the Internet age. Our firm uses a variety of methods; however our practice is one where we network 80 percent of the time and source 20 percent via resume boards. Staffing firms can no longer afford to identify and vet the same candidates that clients can find on their own. Again, not all staffing firms are the same and I will validate that we DO read cover letters and resumes. This may be a dying art for some, but not for us. As a staffing consultant, I’ve learned alot about a candidate in a cover letter before I decide to schedule a phone screen. We also counsel our candidates about writing good cover letters. We teach how to pepper a resume with key words to make it standout.  

The “temp-to-hire” carrot as Swarts puts it is NOT rotten (point eight). It is a bridge to permanent employment for many of our candidates. I was a temp-to-hire employee through a large staffing firm back in my corporate days. It was the best experience I could have imagined and one that I still recall today. I also picked up a few tips and built a relationship with my then staffing consultant. I see his point, but I believe it is just a matter of some organizations reluctance to add permanent staff to their payroll given the economic environment. The temp-to-hire approach is positive rather than the negative picture that has been painted in the article.

As for point number nine (If you have a job, I could get you fired), I agree – not all recruiters are careful. As a staffing consultant, you have to obtain permission to share the resume of a candidate with another organization. If staffing firms have a standard practice not to engage in this type of recruiting/sourcing activity, then hooray for them. Skill marketing a candidate or pulling resumes down from LinkedIn without express permission from a candidate is a practice I like to call “recruiters gone wild.” Again, not all firms are the same, and it should be a general practice for all firms to fully vet a candidate which includes an in-person interview before their background is shared.

Swarts’s number ten (If I’m in Virginia, I probably won’t help you find a job in Nebraska) is correct. I can recall every friendly referral I’ve received or given to colleagues in other staffing firms or organizations. When staffing firms are passionate about impacting the life of another person, only then will we see more and more friendly referrals. I love candidate and client referrals.

At the end of the day when your conscious is clear and your integrity is in tact, for some of us, it’s about the lives you’ve touched and the relationships you’ve built that we remember. Swarts’s article is a great buyer beware piece, but for the thousands of jobs our firm fills the work we do is often greatly appreciated by our clients and our temporary workers.

By Patty Hampton, CSP, Managing Director, Staffing Services/Executive Search Consultant

I’ve been away all this week at the 2010 American Staffing Association Staffing World Conference in Las Vegas, NV. The first take-away I’ve gained from this conference is how the staffing industry is more than just a bridge to permanent employment for temporary and contract workers. More importantly, the industry is consistently used by economists as a barometer of sorts to understand and evaluate the economy with respect to temporary staffing services. Richard Wahlquist, president and chief executive officer of the American Staffing Association put things in perspective when he announced to a packed room of conference attendees that the staffing industry added over 400,000 temporary staffing jobs in 2009. How much more proof does one need to validate that staffing industry professionals are not just filling orders, but we are without a doubt building capacity and strategic relationships with our clients where the end goal is about talent management and impacting the lives of millions of unemployed people.

One of the keynote speakers, Bruce Tulgan, founder of Rainmaker Thinking Inc, woke up the sleeping giant inside me when he talked about how staffing professionals are in the business of helping organizations shape staffing strategies. Tulgan also shared best practices on talent management. He explained how staffing firms can partner with clients to help HR professionals develop their workforce and their internal teams. These teams can create an environment where attrition is not all bad as long as systems and practices are created that align with new breakthrough solutions.

After that session, it was clear to me that I not only needed to attend the Define and Retool Your Future workshop, but that my thought leadership skills were in full swing and rechanneling my energy. Not! This workshop pushed my thinking to the limit. I had to engage my left brain in an exercise to figure out the economic indicators and trends that I follow for our firm where our niche market is the nonprofit sector. I also found myself jotting down how staffing professionals can become “workforce planning specialists.” We can continue to educate clients on how we can be used as strategic partners to help HR practitioners get the “right people on the bus and in the right seats.”

Of course this conference would have definitely disappointed attendees if it didn’t cover social media/ networking. This social media workshop presented staffing professionals with a montage of social networking sites that are popular with recruiters and applicants and their effects on employment screening and the hiring process. The cons seem to far outweigh the pros and it is just a matter of time before we see legislation on this issue. For now, the best advice I got from this session was that employers need to develop best practices and policies now to successfully navigate risks and legal liabilities of using social networking as part of business processes. Attendees walked away with a new slogan: “What goes on in Vegas may end up on Facebook!”

My day ended with workshops on employment law and health care reform. The employment law workshop titled Staffing Feud was my favorite! It was presented in a creative and fun question/answer and jeopardy game show format. As we all know, navigating through complex and confusing legalese is not only a responsibility, but it is a requirement for all HR and staffing professionals. The health care reform workshop was daunting and depressing, but necessary and important for staffing firm owners and managers, HR, tax, and benefit professionals. Although there are several requirements we need to be aware of as of March 2010, a good chunk of the law that will impact most businesses has a 2014 date stamp that will be here before we know it.

By Mac Smith, Manager, Marketing & Special Events

One hot Internet topic this week centers on an incident that recently took place in the New York Jets’ locker-room. Ines Sainz, a Mexican television reporter for TV Azteca, evidently was verbally harassed while trying to conduct an interview with the New York Jets Quarterback Mark Sanchez.  The whole circus is now under investigation by the NFL and Sainz has received an apology from Woody Johnson - owner of the New York Jets. The details surrounding the alleged harassment are still, and will probably remain, fuzzy. Basically it all amounts to a pretty lady dressed to impress in a room with 53 twenty year old men. (I know; how strange anything would go wrong.)

Sainz’s harassment has been a conversation piece at home and in the office, especially by the ladies I know. My wife, an accounting executive in charge of a department of professional women, and my co-workers, mostly female Human Resources  professionals, all have an opinion on the matter that follows the same line of thinking:

“Sainz should have been better prepared, concerning her attire, for the environment she was entering. She has the right to dress how she wants, but everyone needs to be cognoscente of how they appear to others. She needs to weigh the possibilities of her dress undermining her professional/public persona against her desire to present herself in a manner she feels is attractive.”

No one I have spoken to, personally or professionally, believes that any comments or actions made towards Sainz were appropriate. Everyone stated that the reporter has the right to dress however she wants, but most seem to feel she did not help herself.

All this leads me to my central question about personal branding and comportment. How hard should we work to hit that moving target between presenting ourselves in a manner we feel is attractive and altering our appearance to try and insure we are not mistreated? Personally, I don’t have much trouble with this issue. I’m a white middle class 30-something male. Provided I don’t dress like I’m attending a Lady Gaga concert, most people treat me with an ample amount of respect and rarely jump to negative conclusions. This is an advantage I have in our society. But women still are having issues, especially women of foreign ethnicities. Sainz is from Mexico. Mexican TV personalities dress far more risqué than their American counterparts.

In the HR world there are uncomfortable conversations that border on legality everyday concerning the style of dress of staff. Here at Nonprofit Staffing Solutions, we have a very honest conversation about dress with our temporary staff. (All this talk reminds me of a fight that was had at a previous employer between female office staff and the HR Department on what equaled a mule and if mules were appropriate in the office. As a marketing department staffer, I was brought in to provide an objective opinion and definition of mules. I still have nightmares.) We make it very clear that it is our opinion that matters on acceptable dress in the workplace not the temp’s and not even the client’s. (Some of our clients have more casual dress policies. As a firm, we lean away from casual dress in most cases.) This absolute rule may not be the most tactful strategy, but it eliminates any confusion about appropriate workplace dress. It is also taught that any comments outside “nice shoes” should be avoided. Conversations surrounding a person’s appearance can be the most misconstrued types of conversations.

I’m certain that this would have been the conversation our firm would have had with Ms. Sainz had we sent her to the Jets for an interview. We would have provided these pre-appointment instructions already knowing that Ms. Sainz has a very modern Latin look and style of dress.

“Okay Ines, we are all set. You need to report to the practice field about 2:00 pm to touch base with Jets leadership about the interview. You should be able to catch Mark Sanchez after practice about 3:00 pm. I’d recommend that you try to conduct the interview before he reaches the locker-room. Your ability to video a good interview might be hindered by doing so in the locker-room. Also, please remember to dress appropriately. I know this is a field assignment and professional attire is not expected, but we would like you to not dress as casual as you would for a night on the town. Try something more appropriate for a church picnic.”

By Dawn Taylor, Director of Business Development

Across the nation, various organizations are finding themselves spread thin after bidding farewell to the interns who brought valuable ideas not to mention an extra pair of hands. What is left are mountains of work that other employees must now tackle.

To cope with departures, organizations are looking at other alternatives to aid in tackling the loss of their interns. Temporary employees enable your organization to adjust more easily and quickly to workload fluctuations. Temporary staffing firms can quickly provide your organization with qualified staff. Here are just some of reasons why temporary help can be a solution:

Temporary help can maintain staffing flexibility. With the popularity and staying power of flexible work arrangements, employers need to stay current with the needs of today’s work force. Temporary work is just one of the ways that organizations can offer flexibility and at the same time better meet their missions.

Temporary help can save time and money. The cost of hiring temporary workers is often cheaper than the cost of hiring full-time employees especially when budgets are smaller than ever and funding can be limited.

Temporary employees can provide specialized skills. Today temporary workers increasingly include highly skilled individuals with a wide range of educational backgrounds and work experience. Mission driven temporaries are not only highly skilled; they also aid in enhancing the values of the organization.

You decide the length of employment. An organization has the ability to hire a temporary for a day, a week, a month, or even years. Some organizations employ temporary workers as an excellent cost-efficient way to test the abilities of the temporary employee before extending a full-time position. Hiring a temporary worker can also be a good way to continue getting work done while you search for the perfect candidate for a particular position.

As you can see, using a temporary employee can be a very viable option when your interns have bid you farewell.

By Dawn Taylor, Director of Business Development

It’s not often that I come in contact with organizations that have never used staffing services, however in the past three weeks I have had meetings with several that have never dealt with hiring employees through a staffing service. Until recently, I had forgotten how delicate the process can be and how intimidating staffing is to the novice manager. So I felt this would be a good time for all of us to review the basic, but very important, things that should be addressed by any organization before a staffing agency is chosen.

The first and most basic question should be is the firm able to fill your positions? So many firms are specializing now; it’s important to know if the firm you are considering can find the type of candidates that you are looking for. Often, firms are good at finding talent in one area, but may lack the skills and knowledge required to find talent in another. And we are not just talking about staffing IT professionals over finance professionals; we are also talking about finding candidates for different sectors. Nonprofits, government and private sector organizations require different types of candidates. Make sure you understand what their niche is and if it fits with what you need.

You will also want to pay attention to what the staffing agency’s pay rates and benefits packages are like. It’s the agency who will be determining the staffer’s wages and benefits. Make sure they offer competitive compensation and benefits, and their total rewards practices match the standards of your own organization. Plus, the better the compensation, the higher caliber of workers that staffing firm will attract.

It is also a good idea to be cognizant of the number and types of candidates being referred to you by a staffing agency. I recently had a conversation with a manager that thought if she didn’t get at least ten resumes for a position that it was an indicator that the agency’s candidate pool was small.

When I asked how successful the ten resume method had been, the manager said it hadn’t been very successful at all. Well, there’s your sign! When a lot of resumes are forwarded, you are only guaranteed that a lot of candidates will not make the cut. It does not necessarily increase the success rate for finding a qualified candidate. Make sure that the firm you choose is focused on quality not quantity. A good agency will spend the time needed to narrow down their pool of candidates to find the perfect fit for their clients. Others will throw every remotely qualified resume your way, in the hopes that maybe one will stick.

There are other things to take into consideration when choosing a staffing agency, but these few are a good start. Partnering with the right staffing firm can make a big impact on your organization and its ability to meet its mission. It is not a decision to be made quickly. I suggest that you not wait until the staffing needs are urgent; give yourself some time and ask the right questions ahead of time. It will help you find the right staffing agency for your organization.

By Patty Hampton, CSP, Managing Director, Staffing Services/Executive Search Consultant

Are you guilty of focusing too much on a name, address, or the demographics of a resume? Have you Googled, Facebooked, or used LinkedIn to check out a potential candidate?

We all are probably guilty of doing it and these days we can find just about anything if we look hard enough on any search engine or social media networking website. However, do you validate what you uncover? Are you guilty of putting candidate resumes in a “no” or “maybe” pile? What about your hiring managers? Do you have solid reasons why they reject a candidate just on the resume alone? Do you know if they are using social media sites to weed out potentially good candidates?

In my past experience, I have had the “right” candidate for the “right” position, or so I thought, until a client decided to explore the deep-end of the social media networking pool. Not only did the client focus on the name of the candidate, but they also Facebooked the candidate and some search committee members had Googled and used other social media networking sites to make unsavory judgments and decisions about the candidate. This process not only left me with my mouth wide open, but forced me to push back and declare war on hiring managers rejecting candidates that meet and exceed the requirements of a position. While the intentions might be totally innocent at first, the action behind intentions is what bothers me the most.

This unsettling trend has spiraled out of control. Although LinkedIn is a professional networking site, pictures and information updates that a user posts can be used subjectively in a recruiting process. Facebooking and Googling a prospective employee are a slippery slope at best.

About a year ago, CareerBuilder did a survey of more than 2600 hiring managers and human resources professionals and found that out of those who conduct online searches/background checks of job candidates, 29 percent use Facebook and 26 percent use LinkedIn. As social media networking continues to grow in size, it has also become a part of some organizational cultures. Not only do the majority of our employees probably have a Facebook account, but I’m sure if you look hard enough, you can also come to several conclusions just on the pictures and postings alone.

The CareerBuilder survey also found that 35 percent of employers found content on social networking sites that caused them not to hire the candidate. Candidates posted anything from provocative pictures, to using drugs, to showcasing poor communications skills and discriminatory comments.

I have a Facebook profile and I use it with extreme caution, but I also know how to use the privacy settings that allow only people in my network and friends that are approved by me to access my full profile. It is very unfortunate that candidates are not mindful that employers use social media sites as a part of their recruiting strategy. Many candidates do not use the privacy settings feature to their advantage. With this in mind, I’m still an advocate for validating what you uncover.

The “right” candidate that my client decided not to hire turned out to be another organization’s most valued employee. The other client also Facebooked the candidate, but they validated their intentions through a competency and behavior-based interview process.

We cannot deny that social media sites have become a part of our organizational culture and have made their way into some of our vetting processes. They can be great resources if used apporpriately as part of a large program. Not only do I have a Facebook profile, but I also use LinkedIn, Twitter and other sites to network and find top talent. As a search consultant, I network 80 percent of the time and validation is also a huge part of my process. If you’re going to use these social media sites as part of your recruitment strategy than don’t be surprised at what you might find, but for God’s sake validate! Most of all use extreme caution before you reject a potentially good hire.

By Dawn Taylor

A few years ago, I visited a prospect that had never had the pleasure of using temporary workers to augment the organization’s workforce. After speaking with the prospect, it was clear that he had an interesting bias against temporary workers. This organization felt that if a person was “professional” then he or she would not lower him/herself to do temporary work. Recently, this attitude has shifted in large part due to changes in the job market caused by extreme economic instability. However, there are still a great number of organizations that I meet that still look at temporary workers as subpar professionals that cannot get a real job.

For those of you who have had the pleasure and the experience to see first-hand how the temporary worker can assist with the growth, morale, and even the overall mission of an organization, than this blog will reinforce your sound decision to use this valuable workforce resource. For those of you who are still on the fence, I have listed some of the characteristics of today’s temporary employee.

Motivated

According to the American Staffing Association (ASA), eight out of ten temporary employees worked full-time earlier in their careers (same ratio as the traditional work force) and nine out of ten are satisfied with their current positions (compared to 60 percent of those in traditional work arrangements).

Educated

Seventy-four percent of temporary employees have at least some college education, compared with only 62 percent of the traditional workforce (in both cases, one in three of those with some college earned at least a bachelor’s degree).

Well Trained

The ASA has also found that nearly 90 percent of staffing employees say their temporary or contract work experience made them more employable; mostly by developing new or improved skills and by receiving additional on-the-job experience. Twenty percent attributed their enhanced skill levels to specific training provided by their staffing firm. A majority said temporary work strengthened their resumes and four out of ten said the experience helped them gain self-confidence.

Higher Caliber

Also according to the ASA, 72 percent of companies that use temporary employees said the quality of temporary and contract employees provided by staffing firms is equal to or better than their full time employees.
As you can see, the temporary work force is not a hub for the down trodden, the displaced, or the professionally challenged. Temporary employees often go through a more rigorous employment selection process. They are vetted not only by the staffing firms (who are usually experts at vetting), but also the client organizations. This increased scrutiny and the recent changes in the job market have increased the quality of professionals available for temporary assignment. Temporary placement has created a new avenue to work for truly elite professionals.

By Dawn Taylor, Director of Business Development

I have worked in the staffing and recruiting industry for more than a decade and have had the pleasure of meeting with some of the top human resources professionals in the nonprofit sector. There are a few statements over the years that I have pondered, however one stands out. It is one of the top hurdles that I have had to overcome over the years. It is the consensus that all staffing firms are the same.

From a staffing firm’s outer appearance, believers of the above statement are somewhat correct. We all provide in some way, shape or form temporary workers. However, the processes by which an organization is introduced to a temporary worker can vary dramatically from one agency to the next.  The internal interviewing processes of a firm can often lead to the best temporary employee you have had or the worst.

Most, if not all, staffing agencies use a vetting process to choose the best candidates to meet the client organization’s overall needs. These processes often include background checks and interviews. What most customers do not know is that some agencies take as little as five minutes from the handshake to welcome aboard. While others do a “cattle call” style of interview by which they have several candidates in a room all interviewing at the same time. The “cattle call” is called speed interviewing and the entire process from start to finish takes three minutes or less.

In reference to background checks, there are many agencies that think getting a background check is not necessary if they get at least one good reference. Then there are agencies that believe a positive background check is a green light to greatness.  Neither is necessarily correct.

A premier staffing agency will do its due diligence in all of these areas and more.  Asking the right questions about a staffing agency’s vetting processes can be the difference between getting a temporary employee that will add value or one that can potentially wreak havoc.  In essence, a staffing firm’s vetting process should be very similar to yours and in the initial meeting with the firm; this particular area should be explored in depth.

So for all of you who thought all staffing agencies were the same before reading this, I hope that you are getting your questions ready for the next staffing agency that comes a knocking!