The Recruiter’s Contract Staffing Blog

Many recruiters might be saying to themselves, “Okay, how in the world do I get started in contracting?  I don’t know the first thing about it.”  Don’t worry about that.  You do know something about being a recruiter, and that’s still the main component to making contract placements.

In today’s day and age, you must be extremely careful about the questions that you ask a candidate during an interview, as well as the questions that your client companies ask.  The reason is simple—so that you can avoid accusations of discrimination and possible lawsuits.

For just about every subject that can be addressed during an interview, there are legally permissible questions, as well as illegal ones.  Below are four of the top issues that are broached in an interview, with both the legal and illegal approaches.

1. Citizenship

In a previous post, I offered “Six Tips for Finding More (Contract) Candidates.”  I’d like to add to the information in that post by listing four additional ways in which you can uncover a wider diversity of qualified candidates—including candidates for contract positions.

The following are some diversity groups you might want to consider in the future.

When you offer contract staffing as part of your business model, you’ll be able to make more money for a longer period of time due to the better relationships you’ll build with your clients.  The majority of companies prefer to utilize both contract and full-time workers.  If you can provide them with both, then they will be more likely to think of you no matter what kind of need they may have.  In other words, you’ll become what is called a sole-source provider, and your name should be at the top of their list when they have ANY staffing need.

At the end of September, I also had the opportunity to travel to Las Vegas for the 2009 National Association of Personnel Services (NAPS) Conference.  The event was held on Wednesday, September 30, through Saturday, October 3, at the Red Rock Casino Resort.  In spite of the economy, there was a large number of recruiters in attendance.

It was obvious that the recruiters who spent the money and took the time to attend the conference were very serious about their recruiting future, and they felt that NAPS gave them several days to re-energize themselves with some of the best trainers in the country.

At the end of last month, I had the opportunity to travel to Chicago for the 2009 Top Echelon Network Fall Conference.  The event was held on Friday, September 25, and Saturday, September 26, at the Sheraton Gateway Suites.  As the President of Top Echelon Contracting, I met all of the recruiters in attendance at the conference and spoke to quite a few of them about contract staffing and the benefits that it offers.

How many job orders do you have right now that you can’t seem to fill because hiring authorities want you to “send more candidates”?  These days, hiring officials are focused on finding what they consider to be the perfect candidate before they’ll even think about pulling the trigger and making a hire. No matter how good the candidates are that you just sent to them, they’re thinking there still might be somebody better out there.

A whopping total of 70 million Americans were born between the years 1946 and 1964.  These 41- to 59-year olds make up what is known, of course, as the “Baby Boomer Generation.”

Recruiters everywhere are waiting for the Baby Boomers to start retiring in droves, because when they do, there will be a huge talent vacuum in the workforce.  Companies, unable to find the talent that they need, will be clamoring for the specialized services that only recruiters can offer.  However, as time goes on, one thing has become increasingly clear: due to a number of factors, Baby Boomers aren’t able or willing to retire as early as was initially forecast.

There are many benefits associated with making contract placements, most of them geared toward what it can do for you and your firm financially.  In addition, these are benefits that will help you both in the short term and also during the long haul.

1. Earn more money.  Many direct-hire recruiters believe there isn’t enough money in contracting to be worth their while, but that’s simply not the case.  For example, if you have 10 contractors working on assignments, and you’re earning an average of $10/hour for each one, that’s $100/hour.  Over the course of a year, those contractors would earn you $208,000.  And that doesn’t even include overtime.  (Contractors get paid for every hour they work, and consequently, so does the recruiter who placed them.)

As everyone knows, these are challenging and uncertain economic times.  Consequently, they require creative and innovative hiring and staffing solutions.

Sometimes, it’s difficult to determine who devised a particular solution in the first place—the members of the workforce or the companies that endeavor to hire them.  Such is the case with high-level executive temping.