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Managers, Here's Why You Want Staffing Firms To Tell You Something They Shouldn't Know

Forbes Human Resources Council
POST WRITTEN BY
Evan Lassiter

Managers, how many staffing agencies do you think you have been contacted by in, say, the last year alone? If you were to actually keep track of it, the number might shock you.

Right after I switched sides of the recruiting table and moved from staffing to corporate, I joined a company that utilized agencies but had no structure for it in place. It was a free-for-all. At the time, and given the needs of that particular business, it made sense to utilize staffing vendors; we just had to figure out how to make it work for us so we could ditch the approach of throwing a hundred resumes against the wall and seeing what stuck. I was tasked with putting together a new vendor management system (VMS), which was a great opportunity — especially since I had just come from that side of the industry.

Naturally, I started looking into all the possibilities out there: What companies had placed people with us before (including the company I had just come from), who had tried but not placed anyone to date, who I already knew of and then everyone else who had just pinged looking to work with us. I kept a file of possible vendors for this new program and ended up with just over 100 staffing agencies. That's 100, just in the city of Atlanta. But in the end, I ended up with only two vendors on my list.

Managers and companies alike, you have been and will continue to be approached by staffing agencies about working with you. If you want to work with them, then you need to find who's really going to work for you and avoid who isn't. Do you have vendors right now who haven't delivered? It's sort of a rhetorical question because the answer is most likely yes. Do yourself a favor: Scrap them and start over.

Thinking of the file of 100 agencies I had several years ago, it's an easy assumption there are a million staffing agencies out there. And I'd say 90-95% of them have the same messaging, reach out around the same time (for some odd reason) and, after it's all said and done, produce the same results.

How familiar does this sound? "Do you have 15 minutes to chat, or could I treat you to a coffee or lunch? I want to find out how I can get on your vendor list." Then you might hear a long intro covering who they are, what they do, how they have the best network of candidates, their 90-day guarantee or replacement, etc. Ever had an "active candidate" dangled in front of you, often for a role that was never open? After being in this industry and communicating with so many over the years, I can say this: There is not a staffing firm out there that is working off of any new cutting-edge system where only they have access to certain candidates that no one else on the planet will ever find. They're all fishing out of the same pond.

That said, what should you be looking for in a potential staffing partner? These are what I have found to be the best and most promising indicators:

1. After receiving an initial message, determine if you're talking with someone who has actually done their homework on you. Can they tell you something they wouldn't have known without really looking into it (beyond browsing your company's Careers page and public job listings)? It's not only a great differentiator, but an indicator they're going to know your business, which is exactly what you want in a partner. The good thing is you're not going to meet with a lot of people who actually do this. Of the two vendors that ended up on that list of mine, that I ended up working with exclusively, both of them came in at the beginning with pitches that included info they'd learned only from digging and doing homework.

2. Put vendors through a trial run and see how they do. Black-and-white results aren't the best way to go, because it's safe to assume a new vendor isn't going to get it right the first or second time, and you shouldn't expect them to. Have some additional factors in mind. Easy indicators are how many submittals they have, how many of them are really qualified, the depths of the interview process, how many interviews lead to hires, etc. But consider the vendors who submit only a few people or not at all at the beginning. If you have a vendor taking the initiative and reaching out to you with summaries of their progress or valid explanations of why they haven't found anyone, that's something to really think about.

When I narrowed the VMS list down after receiving each vendor's proposal, I asked each one to work on a small handful of roles we had open so I could evaluate the work they produced. I wasn't as concerned about who was sending the right candidates then; I was more concerned about who was actually going to work for us. Who was not just going to submit candidates, but who communicated with me and asked questions about the role and company initiatives? I could tell within a week who was going to be sticking around and who wasn't. The ones I worked with for the long haul had some good weeks, and they had some bad ones. Importantly, during the bad ones, they came to me and told me what happened, and I didn't think anything of it because I know the industry has its ups and downs.

Simply put, you might have to work a little bit upfront to find vendors that will make your life easier for the long haul. Choose wisely.

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