Contract Staffing Agency

Advantages of Contract Staffing

Contract staffing is an great way to quickly secure temporary workers when an urgent need arises and there is not enough in-house expertise to fill that need. It also allows organizations to respond to changing business demands and market conditions without the long-term commitment of a permanent hire.

Here are some of the main benefits of working with a contract staffing agency:

Workforce Flexibility

Business demand seldom stays the same. Sales cycles, seasonal peaks, project pipelines, and growth phases all create times when you need more people, sometimes significantly more, followed by quieter stretches when you don’t. Contract staffing enables you to scale your team up or down to adapt to these changes without the financial cost and cultural damage of overhiring and then laying people off.

Quick Access to Talent

Hiring a full-time employee can take months, considering the time it takes to source and interview, plus offers and notice periods. A staffing agency can typically put a pre-vetted candidate on the job within days, because the sourcing and screening work has already been done. That speed is what keeps you on track or falling behind when a key person leaves unexpectedly or the deadline on a project tightens.

Specialized Skills for Specialized Needs

Some expertise is costly and only needed occasionally. A company may bring in three specialists for nine months to install a new system and then not need them again. It would be wasteful to hire them permanently but there is no way of doing it without them either. Contract staffing matches the requirements for the role with the length of the work.

Cost and Headcount Agility

An employee costs much more than their salary when you consider the benefits, payroll taxes, equipment, training, and long-term commitments of a full-time hire. With contract workers, you pay one rate to the agency. Many companies also have tight headcount budgets that require significant approval to add a permanent role, but spend on contractors is much more flexible.

Reduced Employment Risk and Compliance Burden

The staffing agency is the legal employer and is, therefore, responsible for worker classification, payroll taxes, workers’ compensation, unemployment claims and the various employment laws that change from region to region. This removes a significant compliance burden for companies expanding into new markets, or operating in multiple locations, that still want a source of skilled workers.

Contract-To-Hire Mitigates Hiring Risk

Resumes and interviews can only tell you so much. You can learn all you need to know by watching someone actually do the work. Contract-to-hire arrangements let you try out a worker on real tasks for weeks or months before you commit to hiring them permanently, which greatly reduces the risk of a bad hire.

Coverage During Workforce Gaps

Illness, parental leave, sabbaticals, and unexpected resignations all create temporary holes in a team. Contract staffing fills them without you having to scramble to fill a permanent position to address a temporary need, which often results in the wrong fit and another opening in a matter of months.

Our Contract Staffing Services

Our expert recruiters manage the entire lifecycle of a contract engagement, from sourcing the right candidate to overseeing the assignment day-to-day. The services below are included in every engagement and scaled to the complexity and size of your staffing requirements.

1. Finding Talent

Our aim is to deliver a carefully chosen shortlist of quality candidates. To do this, we leverage multiple channels to find the best talent for your hiring needs. We first look through our current database of previously vetted contractors to see if there is anyone who has successfully worked on an assignment like the one you need done. Then we scour job ads, job boards, professional associations, LinkedIn, and our own talent network until we find a top-notch professional for the job. We also ask for referrals from current contractors.

2. Resume Screening

We carefully review resumes to identify applicants who meet the basic job requirements. This allows us to filter out candidates who don’t have the right credentials, so we don’t waste time on the wrong people.

3. Skills Assessment

We evaluate the technical and soft skills of potential candidates to determine if they are proficient in specific areas for the role.

4. Interviews

The next step in our screening process is initial interviews to determine the cultural fit of candidates. We also look at their work style, communication skills, and career goals.

5. Reference Checks

Our recruiters do a thorough background and reference check on the candidates that are seriously being considered for the job. We also contact previous employers and colleagues to verify their work performance and project history.

6. Rate and Contract Negotiation

We negotiate contract terms, duration, and bill rates with both the client and the candidate, leveraging our market insights to set expectations in line with reality. The goal is an agreement that considers the role and the market so that the two sides are happy, setting the stage for a successful working relationship.

7. Payroll and Administrative Management

Since the contractor is our employee, we take care of their paychecks, benefits, taxes, and HR paperwork. They show up at the office and do the work day-to-day without the administrative burden of a full-time employee.

8. Compliance and Employment Law Management

Whether your company operates in just one location or many, we’ll verify the relevant employment regulations, right-to-work laws, employee classification, and workers’ compensation. We also deal with unemployment claims.

9. Ongoing Assignment Management

Our involvement doesn’t end after a contractor has been placed. We offer ongoing support; managing check-ins, resolving issues, processing extensions, and serving as the main point of contact for the contractor.

10. Contract-To-Hire Support

Many contract assignments turn into permanent offers, and we oversee that transition from beginning to end. At the start of the engagement, we discuss the terms of any future conversion, such as the length of the trial period and the conversion fee, so there are no surprises later on.

If you choose to make the contractor a permanent member of staff, we’ll negotiate salary and start date, handle all the paperwork to transfer the worker from our employment to yours, and coordinate the handover so there is no interruption to the work. This enables an easy transition from contractor to permanent employee that protects all parties’ interests and ensures success.

Why Partner with Us for Your Contract Staffing Needs?

We tailor each contract staffing engagement to our client’s role, timeline, and working environment instead of following a one-size-fits-all approach. While skills get a candidate through the door, cultural fit determines if they will perform well once they start working with your team. That’s why we focus on their communication style, if they can work under pressure, and if their way of working fits the environment they are going to join.

Our recruiters also work hard to find candidates from a wide range of backgrounds and evaluate them on their professional merits rather than signals that are unrelated to capability. The result is a better talent pool for you and fairer access for the people we place.

Our reputation in contract staffing is built on the engagements that last beyond the first contract, such as extensions, contract-to-hire conversions, and repeat work from clients. In the spirit of continuous improvement, we ask for honest feedback from clients throughout an engagement so that we become sharper on each client’s specific needs with time.

When you use Keller Executive Search to hire contractors, it removes the operational work of hiring, payroll, and contractor management from your finance and HR teams, so they can focus on more important projects while the assignment runs in the background.

Contact us to discuss your unique needs and see how we can provide contract staffing solutions.