5 Questions to Ask Your Current Staffing Vendors

Unfortunately, not every staffing vendor on the market is capable of delivering successful staffing solutions, especially when it comes to project management staffing. Learn how to tell the difference between incompetent companies and truly dedicated staffing partners by asking these five important questions.

1. What is your submittal to hire ratio?

The ideal answer to this question should be ​very low, or more specifically, four to one or below. One major reason you’re seeking staffing solutions is to reduce the time you spend hiring more employees for your workforce. The last thing you want to do is hire a staffing vendor that is going to run a generic search through a database and send you the first dozen resumes that match the basic criteria.

2. Who is qualifying the candidates?

When it comes to assembling your workforce, you want to make sure you’re not leaving the fate of your company in the hands of a part-time, generalist recruiter searching for keywords, especially if you’re in need of IT staffing solutions. The staffing vendor you want should know what you need before you even make a request. The best answer to this question would be a team of subject matter experts who know exactly what your company needs. That’s who should be qualifying candidates. Otherwise, your staffing solutions are going to cause a lot of staffing ​problems.

3. Can you describe our company culture in your own words?

Anyone can match a job description to a few resumes. What you need is a staffing partner that takes the time to familiarize themselves with the culture of your company to determine which candidates will make a smooth transition. The culture of your company plays a vital role in determining your employee turnover rates, which means you can save loads of time and money by hiring individuals who are not only qualified for the position but who mesh well with the culture you’ve created.

This question will also help you weed out the mass staffing agencies who put little thought or effort into submissions. You need ​and deserve ​ a staffing partner who takes the time to evaluate your company, inside and out. Otherwise, you’re never going to find effective project management staffing solutions.

4. Do you provide training and support to resources?

If you’re going to invest in a staffing company, then you may as well invest in one that will go the extra mile to provide you with ​powerful staffing solutions​. There are generalized staffing vendors who close your case and move onto the next as soon as they’ve completed it, and there are staffing vendors who do whatever it takes to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth, like investing in individual careers by providing the necessary training and resources to succeed. This is especially important if you’re looking for employees with specialized skill sets.

5. Can I provide you with a list of very specific questions to ask the candidate before you submit them to me?

The answer you are looking for is ABSOLUTELY. Any staffing vendor worth its salt knows that every vacant position is unique and will vary from company to company. The type of project manager you’re looking for could be entirely different from the type of project manager another company is seeking. If the staffing company in question isn’t willing to go above and beyond to qualify your candidates, don’t hire them.

Contact us today​ for powerful project management staffing and IT staffing solutions from a dedicated staffing partner who will answer YES to each one of these crucial questions.

Why Outsourcing Your Staffing Doesn’t Work

Desperate for convenience and shorter hiring timelines, many companies use mass staffing vendors to outsource their staffing responsibilities. Unfortunately, this route causes more problems in the long run, resulting in wasted time, wasted money, and wasted opportunities.

In this article, we’ll explain why outsourcing your staffing is a bigger headache than it’s worth. We’ll also provide you with a better alternative: project management staffing and IT staffing solutions that will draw real talent to your organization.

Why Staffing Agencies Are Not the Answer

Enlisting the services of a staffing agency is never a good idea — for several reasons. To show you what we mean, we’ve elaborated on the three drawbacks of putting the fate of your workforce in the hands of a mass staffing agency.

1. Generalized Services

Staffing agencies are incapable of providing expertise-driven results, so if you’re looking for tailored IT staffing solutions, you won’t find them at an agency. These mass staffing vendors are all about quantity over quality. They acquire thousands upon thousands of resumes from all kinds of contractors and match applicants to your job description based on keywords in their database. If you’re looking for a certain standard of expertise in your industry, the chances of you landing an exceptional applicant within a staffing vendor are very slim.

2. Face-Value Screening

How many times have you been impressed with a resume, only to be disappointed in the interview when you discover that the applicant exaggerated his knowledge and abilities on paper? One of the biggest reasons why staffing agencies are unable to provide successful project management staffing solutions is due to their face-value screening process. These agencies match your job description with words on a screen; they don’t take the time to validate their candidates. Instead, they send over handfuls of resumes that could lead to countless hours wasted on dead-end interviews.

3. Impersonal Service

If you were hoping for a friendly representative dedicated to finding you the next best project manager, think again. To a mass corporation staffing agency, you’re nothing but a number. Employees work under high quotas and short time frames, which means your needs will be pushed to the “completed” pile as soon as possible. Staffing agencies have no interest in cultivating a relationship with you or gaining a thorough understanding of the culture of your company; what they’re interested in, is another sale.

Next Level Staffing Solutions

The term “next level staffing solutions” may have you thinking of the infamously expensive and often disappointing recruitment process outsourcing model (or RPO), but that’s not what we’re talking about here. No, we’re referring to staffing solutions that are both incredibly precise ​and ​ affordable. Staffing partners like PPM Solutions provide the benefits of what a recruitment process outsourcing model should be, but with the cost and flexibility of traditional staffing outsourcing. We’ve taken the best attributes from each concept and combined them to form the perfect ​Project Management and IT staffing solutions​.

You see, specialized staffing partners take the time to thoroughly understand what you need in a candidate. We evaluate the culture of your company, your ideal employee, and several other factors to ensure our results mesh perfectly with your workforce and improve your company. Unlike generalized staffing agencies, we place quality over quantity every single time.

The result of using expertise-oriented staffing solutions is that of using less money and time to assemble the dream team. Gone are the days of sifting through countless resumes and interviewing unqualified candidates—specialized staffing partners narrow down the results to a small handful of exceptional applicants for every position. In doing so, PPMS is able to reduce overhead costs in the hiring department, employee turnover rates, and establish a firm relationship to ensure your empty positions are never vacant for long.

For powerful and effective project management staffing solutions, ​contact us today​!