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Pay Rates for Contingent Workers

2007-04-12T07:13:00.000-07:00

The following table illustrates how the contingent worker’s status may affect the bill rate and the agency’s profits:

W-2 Bill Rate
Pay Rate (Direct Labor Rate): $50 per Hour
Negotiated Markup 30%: $15 per Hour
Bill Rate: $65 per Hour
Agency Cost (No Benefits): $10 per Hour
Agency Profit: $5 per Hour

IC 1099 Bill Rate
Pay Rate (Direct Labor Rate): $50 per Hour
Negotiated Markup 30%: $15 per Hour
Bill Rate: $65 per Hour
Agency Cost (No Benefits): $5 per Hour
Agency Profit: $10 per Hour

The principal difference in cost in the above example is due to the fact that for a W-2 employee, the agency must pay the employer’s share of certain employment related taxes such as FICA, FUTA, state unemployment, etc. On the surface, a 30% markup is competitive. However, by understanding that the placement was not a W-2 employee of the agency, a lower markup should have been negotiated that could have led to savings of approximately $10,000 per year on this single placement.

In order to assist you in evaluating markups, our experience indicates that acceptable markup percentages from agencies generally fall in the ranges defined below:

W-2: 30% - 45%
IC 1099: 12% - 22%

Co-Employment in IRS Section 1706

2007-04-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

It's tax season, and for busy HR professionals that means reviewing the hiring practices and management of temps and other contingent workers over the past year. Most importantly, these detailed reviews focus on exposure to and instances of "co-employment".

According to ContingentLaw.com, co-employment is "a legal doctrine which applies when two businesses exert some control over an employee's work or working conditions. Relationships between temporary staffing agencies and business clients are typical examples and consequently, easy targets for lawsuits initiated by temporary or other contingent workers."

Contingent staffing can be costly to organizations that do not handle it carefully and correctly. Any company or agency that hires, refers, or manages temporary or contract workers can face costly legal battles as a co-employer of temporary, contract, or other contingent workers. Complex legal requirements and federal statues are dramatically transforming the risks and potential liabilities involved in the hiring and managing of contingent workers. In a co-employment lawsuit, your company and the other co-employer will be equally liable even if there was no wrong-doing on the part of your company. Among many other workforce management issues, risk mitigation with regard to co-employment been pushed up the priority list because of the devastating effects it can inflict upon unsuspecting employers.

Compounding the complex issue of co-employment is IRS Section 1706 of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (1986–3, Vol. 1, C.B. 698) (TRA '86) . Section 1706 places strict limits on who can be classed as a contractor in technical services industries. This can eliminate independent contracting as an option in many situations where it would be ideal. Having the flexibility to bring in an outside contractor is of crucial importance for many businesses, especially in the technical field. Many IT professionals also view the right to be self-employed as essential to their livelihoods.

Yet section 1706 amended section 530 by adding subsection (d). "Section 530(d) provides that relief under section 530(a) is not available in the case of a worker who, pursuant to an arrangement between the business and a client, provides services for that client as any of the following: engineer, designer, drafter, computer programmer, systems analyst, and other similarly skilled worker engaged in a similar line of work. Section 1706 of TRA '86 applies only to the business in a three-party situation, namely, the business providing workers to a client. The fact that the worker is incorporated is immaterial. The intent of Congress was to classify, under the common law rules, workers retained by businesses to provide technical services, without regard to section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978. Section 1706 does not change anyone from an independent contractor to an employee. The examiner must still look at the common law rules. Section 1706 applies to remuneration paid and services rendered after December 31, 1986."

The potential harm caused by Section 1706 is that with only the common law employment test to prove a worker's status to the IRS, many high-tech firms will not hire independent contractors in order to avoid an IRS audit. The time and expenses to contest the IRS would outweigh the benefit, even if the audit is favorable. For independent contractors, this means less employment opportunities.

Alternatively, employers may choose to avoid co-employment risks by using risk mitigation services such as payrolling. nextSource, Inc. offers payroll and benefits administration services to afford employers the flexibility to engage independent contractors (1099s). nextSource payrolling entails adding your non-agency represented contingent workers to the nextSource payroll, thus minimizing co-employment risks and eliminating paperwork associated with benefits, payroll and related tax issues.

Vendor Management for Today's Market

2007-04-10T11:30:00.000-07:00

Aside from simply having a vendor management program in place, truly efficient vendor management requires effective collaborations with your vendors and a deep understanding of your business needs and internal processes. Additionally, you must consistently monitor your vendor base to ensure that quality and high performance are rewarded accordingly. When developing metrics, ComputerWorld suggests that, "Metrics are the foundation of your vendor management program. You get what you measure, not what is in the contract. Choose metrics that support your goals and reward the behavior you want to encourage." Having clearly defined goals and measurements will encourage vendor performance and loyalty.

Your VMS should be customizable such that your organization’s goals and vendor metrics are easily attainable via real-time reports. nextSource's Talent Acquisition Management Solution (TAMS) not only automates the entire acquisition and management lifecycle for on- and off-boarding contingent labor and direct hires, but TAMS also provides online reporting of diversity spend, and supplier accrual and spend in real-time. By streamlining reporting and other vendor management processes, TAMS can bring you closer to the perfect balance of services, cost, and accountability which are all needed for optimal efficiency of vendor services.

Staffing Experience

2007-04-09T13:24:00.000-07:00

Every company has their own way of defining experience levels. For example, some companies may consider a Junior level to represent 0 – 1 years of experience while another company may consider a Junior level to have 1 – 3 years of experience. nextSource has created one process that works even if the job/applicant market has no banding definition at all. Career banding is a human resources and procurment system that affects the classification, hiring, pay, promotion, evaluation, and career development opportunities for employees. The benefits of banding include increased flexibility for managers to adjust pay for eligible employees, and making is easer for employees to move up throught the pay range by acquiring and demonstrating new job-related competencies, education, or training. Career banding can attract and keep more talented employees by opening up potential for career advancement.

Regardless of how a company defines experience level banding, one pattern emerges: the lower the experience level, the lower the rate or salary and the higher the experience level, the higher the rate or salary. This is the basic premise that allows nextSource to examine and categorize the unbanded marketplace. Using the following methodology it is possible to define experience level banding against the un-banded marketplace and satisfy the demands of all companies regardless of the experience levels that they may use.

nextSource has found that a natural segmentation occurs among the experience years and related rate or salary that they have been able to capture in their methodology for experience banding. Identifying the rate and salary limits associated with this segmentation is the exercise of the banding utilized within The People Ticker. The People Ticker incorporates default assumptions about the unbanded job/applicant marketplace based on this segmentation. For example, the segmentation assumptions reflect that the pay rates falling in the lowest 25% of the reported pay rates are representative of pay rates for a Junior experience level while the top 10% of the pay rates (between 90% and 100% of pay rates reported) are representative of the GURU experience level. In its segmentation assumptions, The People Ticker uses a total of four experience levels. The corresponding banding ranges applicable to each experience level are defined below:

Junior: 0% - 25% of Pay Rates Reported

Mid-Level: 25% - 50% of Pay Rates Reported

Senior: 50% - 90% of Pay Rates Reported

Guru: 90% - 100% of Pay Rates Reported

Experience Level banding in the marketplace is defined as a function of Pay Rate Range. Professionals who have been defined as Senior by companies will fall to the higher end of the banding scale than professionals companies have defined as Junior which will fall to the lower end of the banding scale.

Negotiating New Placements

2007-04-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

Since you are not dealing with changes to existing pay and bill arrangements, the negotiation of new placements may be easier than renegotiating the embedded base of contingent workers. However, the bottom line impact may be just as significant. Your company may or may not have created a Rate Card (ideally based on Pay Rate) for hiring contingent workers using The People Ticker. A Rate Card created with The People Ticker can be a valuable guide during negotiations since you will probably have the same or better market rate information than that possessed by the Staffing Agency. The Rate Card defines competitive parameters relative to engagement rates and such parameters should not be viewed as fixed or unchangeable. Will situations occur when it makes sense to hire out of scope from the Rate Card? Of course, but it is vital to know when and why these occurrences happen to avoid setting expensive precedents.

One thing to keep in mind is having designated individuals with appropriate training in the negotiation of bill rates for contingent workers. The danger in non-centralized negotiations is that Hiring Managers and Agencies tend to rely on past history to dictate pricing for the next placement and that they are not always privy to current market rates. Once a manager engages a contingent worker at a rate of $75/hr, the precedent has been set with that agency and other similar, new placements by that agency tend to follow the same pricing. This may result in enormous costs to your organization.

In order to help control this activity and to insure the maximum opportunity for savings, nextSource recommends the review and negotiation, if applicable, of every new placement even though a Rate Card may be in place. Why? Savings opportunities should be identified and realized whenever possible and skilled users should be aware of all possibilities that may impact the bill rate. For example, the type of contingent worker being placed can greatly affect the final bill rate. Without understanding whether or not the contingent worker being placed is a W-2 employee of the agency or a subcontractor (IC/1099) to the agency, the agreed upon markups may result in additional cost to the user.

Applicant Tracking Systems

2007-04-04T10:18:00.000-07:00

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is an application that enables the electronic handling of corporate recruitment needs by tracking candidates through each stage from sourcing to hire. According to Business Week, there is a great need to "consider centralization of recruitment resources and investment in recruitment technology to maximize the effectiveness of the workforce plan" and "improve the ability to measure the effectiveness of the organization." Is an applicant tracking system (ATS) the answer to centralization and standardization of internal hiring practices?

Although talent acquisition has been shown to work best as a defined process, a wide variance often exists amongst different managers a typical company’s hiring process. Recruitment practices impact everything from the ability to attract top talent to a company's bottom line. Without an ATS in place, inconsistent hiring practices can lead to discrimination and other unfavorable recruitment tactics that expose an employer to hefty fines and millions in lost revenue. Compliant recordkeeping is a growing concern for corporate recruitment as the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) set new guidelines regarding discrimination. Consequently, the effort to track hiring procedures continues to gain momentum.

BusinessWeek notes that there are many benefits of an ATS. Notably, "the defined recruitment stages within an ATS force recruiters and hiring managers to document their recruitment, resulting in a higher level of consistency and visibility. The resulting data can be analyzed for systemic discrimination as well as a host of other issues (e.g., time-to-fill, source of candidates, interview-to-offer ratio, etc.) to help pinpoint areas for improvement in the talent-acquisition pipeline." In other words, standardization improves execution and promotes the accountability of the brand.

nextSource's VMS solution, TAMS (Talent Acquisition Management Solution), goes beyond an applicant tracking system by fully integrating the hiring process for full-time labor with the procurement process for temporary labor. TAMS eliminates the need for Procurement and HR departments to use separate systems for tracking full-time candidates and temporary workers. Additionally, TAMS offers access to The People Ticker, the industry's only real-time rate and salary benchmarking tool developed to assist HR and Procurement professionals in pricing labor. The People Ticker helps organizations set internal rate structures by ensuring that salary and rate offers are competitive and aligned with the current labor market. Together, TAMS and The People Ticker can help organizations standardize hiring and labor procurement practices while tracking, managing and pricing their workforce in a cost-efficient and timely manner.

Canada Job Market

2007-03-27T07:09:00.000-07:00

As The People Ticker is launching in Canada, it's the perfect time to take a closer look into what is going on in the Canadian job market. Technology jobs are on the rise with many opportunities in the field. This job availability may help slow the "Brain Drain" that has been much discussed in Canada in recent years. Many skilled workers have been leaving Canada to seek higher paying jobs in the US but more tech jobs can keep workers in the area.

So what are the other trends going on in Canada? Where is job market picking up and where is it slowing down? It looks like it's time for job seekers in Canada to head west. Statistics Canada has the following information about the current job trends in the Great White North:

"While employment was little changed in February 2007, a long term trend that continues to hold is robust employment growth in Canada's three westernmost provinces. Since February 2006, growth in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia has exceeded the national growth rate of 2.4%. This is in contrast to Central Canada where employment gains in both Quebec and Ontario have been more restrained with growth below the national average."

In fact, our research reflects that Calgary is one of the fastest-growing markets.

Renegotiating Process

2007-03-26T07:56:00.000-07:00

A summary of the process goes as follows:

Notify Manager
It is good practice to alert the manager (usually via letter) that a rate analysis is being performed and that their input will be needed during the process. It is important to communicate to the manager that the goal is NOT to lose the contractor, but to determine, if any, the amount of savings that may be realized based on current market rates.

Market Rate of Job
This analysis will allow you to determine the market rate for the skill sets you require.

Market Rate of Worker
This analysis will allow you to determine the market rate for the contingent worker. This can be a valuable step in identifying potential retention issues prior to negotiating.

Discuss with Manager
This step in the process requires analysis and caution. Once you have the market information, you must compare it to the pay rates and markups of your existing contingent workers. Where differences are identified, discussions must take place with the contingent worker’s manager and a negotiation strategy must be agreed to. Strategies will be based upon the magnitude of any differences identified, length of assignment, ability to replace the contingent worker with a comparably skilled worker at market rates, any unique circumstances, etc. It is important to remember that any bill rate negotiations will take place with the agency representing the contingent worker and not directly with the contingent worker. The agency must understand that the Pay Rate and Markup must be kept separate in all negotiations in order to avoid negative impact on the contingent worker. By negotiating Bill Rates only, an agency may cut the Pay Rate for the contingent worker and not reduce its markup to yield the Bill Rate reduction that you target. By negatively affecting the Pay Rate, you may put yourself in a position to lose the contingent worker.

Discuss with Agency
During most renegotiation efforts, the goal is to reduce the agency's Markup rather than reducing the contingent worker's Pay Rate. Staffing agencies provide valuable recruiting and retention services to your organization for the contingent workers they provide. A competitive Markup, consistent with the services provided, will bring value to your company and incentive to your Staffing Agencies. You should expect higher markups from agencies that provide paid holidays and vacations, health benefits, training, bonuses etc. Therefore, it is important to understand the makeup of the markups that agencies are using. Many times agencies are willing to reduce markups without impacting the level of their services in exchange for higher volumes of placements.

Renegotiating Embedded Base

2007-03-20T09:21:00.000-07:00

Your company's Embedded Base of contingent workers is defined as those contingent workers who are currently on assignment. This may include individuals who have been on assignment for extended periods of time and therefore may have been engaged when market rates were substantially different than what they are in today's market. This is an area that is very often overlooked by companies due to the difficulty in tracking fluctuations in market rates. In fact, the longer these individuals are on assignment, the more likely it is that they have been granted increases to their pay rates and bill rates which may be in direct contrast to the realities of the existing market.

To effectively renegotiate your company's embedded base, you will ideally have the following:
• Contingent Worker Name and Manager Name
• Resume and job description for the Contingent Worker
• Contingent Worker Pay Rate
• Contingent Worker Bill Rate
• Date of initial placement
• Expected end date of assignment

The successful renegotiation of embedded base contingent workers will, except in very rare instances, result in real dollar savings to your company without losing the contingent worker as a result of such negotiations.

Consider Insourcing

2007-03-16T07:43:00.000-07:00

Much has been made of outsourcing, whether by supporters noting the economic benefits or opponents arguing that it takes away jobs. For a while now, everyone seemed to agree on one thing; outsourced labor can cost considerably less and India is one of the most attractive countries to choose. However, last month's Economist issue, "India on Fire," points out some startling realizations that may be the start of a trend toward finding workers closer to home once more.

India was once sought after as the location for phone banks and other outsourcing due to the low labor costs. However, last year rates in India have tripled and unexpected costs have proven to be significant. In India, there is a high job turnover rate and much time needs to be spent training replacement employees. This cuts into company efficiency and profitability.

So what is the future of outsourcing? India might not be the future. The overall costs for offshore workers is getting more expensive and it may be time to bring the work home through insourcing, especially when there are so many workers available nearby. Only time will tell.

Successful Negotiation

2007-03-13T07:52:00.000-07:00

In addition to understanding the negotiation environment and all related potential impacts, current and accurate information is the key to any successful negotiation. The People Ticker provides real time information to allow users to establish their overall negotiation strategy.

The People Ticker provides the most current information available that helps your company to:

· Define expectations for the current Pay Rates for contingent workers
· Define expectations for the Staffing Agency relative to Markups

· Define expectations for the current market Bill Rates relative to your

contingent workers

This information can be vital in agency contracts and is of interest for renegotiating bill rates for your embedded base of contingent workers as well as new placements.

Negotiation Planning

2007-03-08T06:52:00.000-08:00

Everyone knows that a successful negotiation must be well planned and this requires a good deal of research. When controlling contingent labor costs, current market data is critical. Having the most up-to-date information will allow you to negotiate intelligently, leading to big savings. However, the monetary portion of the negotiation process is only one of a number of factors that must be considered when planning your negotiations whether for existing contingent workers or new engagements. It is important to understand some of the other parameters that may impact on any negotiations.

In most companies there are internal competing goals when it comes to the engagement or continuation of the services of a contingent worker that may significantly affect any bill rate negotiations or renegotiations. A typical scenario is that the Hiring Manager is concerned primarily about the availability of the contingent worker and meeting project schedules and cost becomes a secondary factor; Procurement wants to negotiate bill rates to save money; Human Resources is concerned about headcount, length of assignment and other co-employment issues, etc. Other typical concerns may be the financial viability of the agency furnishing the contingent worker and types and amounts of insurance coverage.

A well-planned negotiation process takes into consideration all of the above factors as well as the goals of all interested parties. Occasionally, the choice of losing a contractor mid-project and extending project deadlines through an unreasonable bill rate renegotiation may put all efforts to reduce a particular bill rate on the back burner. In most cases, necessity dictates approach and consequently, communication among all interested parties is essential for successful negotiations. And nextSource's services have enabled companies to have all the information for negotiation. Visit the success stories!

Rate Card Development

2007-03-05T09:18:00.000-08:00

The People Ticker allows users to create a Rate Card. What does this do? It allows users to compile and track common job titles, skill sets, and experience levels. Furthermore, you can follow the pay rates and bill rates that currently apply to these job profiles.

Usually, rate cards are difficult to create and maintain. Challenging issues arise, such as:

1) Every Company has unique lists of Job Titles

2) Every Company has unique skill set definitions for titles

3) Every Company has some level of internal banding for each skill set

4) Data becomes obsolete quickly

The People Ticker addresses these concerns and makes rate cards easier and more accurate. It can automatically update the Rate Card when market activity results in changes to the pay and bill rate information for the user.

The goal is to define a Rate Card that is relevant to the company and responds to changes in the marketplace with minimum effort on the part of the user. Once a user has created a Job Title and associated skill sets, that Job Title may be saved to the Rate Card for future access with the click of the computer mouse. Each time a new Job Title is created, it may be added to the Rate Card. The People Ticker makes Rate Cards just that easy. So what are you waiting for?

Fixed Markup

2007-03-01T07:28:00.000-08:00

As a way of controlling bill rates, a client company may negotiate a fixed markup percentage for the agency to be applied to the pay rate. This may be based on any number of factors including skill type, geography, competitive solicitation, etc. This approach has the billing rate going higher as the pay rate rises, which increases the agency's margin in real dollars. The principal drawback to this approach is the agency does not have any incentive to locate and place candidates at the lowest, competitive pay rates since they apply the agreed upon markup percentage to the pay rate.

This illustrates a need to understand and monitor the pay rates. A drawback of the markup approach, if not managed appropriately, is the loss of the most qualified talent since the staffing agencies may be inclined to place their most qualified individuals with customers with the highest markups. Therefore you can see the importance of competitive pay rates to attract the most qualified talent and competitive markups to insure the placement of the qualified talent with your company.

The People Ticker allows users to make decisions in these matters by providing them with the most current market knowledge available today. Take a look at this sample market report.

Rate Markups

2007-02-27T08:02:00.000-08:00

When hiring from an agency, there is a pay rate that the worker is getting and a bill rate which the agency charges and the difference is the markup. The People Ticker can give you an idea of what kind of markups to expect. The markups displayed as part of The People Ticker's search results represent an average of the markup data points that we have collected in The People Ticker database. Since we are collecting markup information from a number of sources including hundreds of agencies and thousands of individuals, the range of markups captured vary widely. Some of the most common factors that contribute to the variation in the reported markups are:

• Expertise of buying organization
• Corporate contracts
• Competitive solicitations
• Type of skill set, i.e. programmer vs. receptionist vs. warehouse worker
• Volume of business
• Relationship of contingent worker with agency, i.e. W2 employee, independent contractor,
etc.
• Benefits paid by agency for contingent worker (Paid holidays & vacation, medical coverage,
life insurance, 401K, training, etc.)
• Length of assignment
• Other overhead and general & administrative expenses
• Profit

For a company working with contingent workers, understanding the markup can offer insight needed for making hiring decisions. Is it worth the extra expense for more expertise? Is it worth hiring more workers in order to get a lower rate per worker? If you are unhappy with a current agency, is it worth finding a new one that you may not have a relationship with? When you understand all the elements of the markup, it can make it easier to evaluate and negotiate.

Bill Rate

2007-02-22T05:47:00.000-08:00

When dealing with a temp agency, the easiest way to work toward getting the best deal is to negotiate a relatively low bill rate. This is the amount that a company pays to a staffing agency for the services of a contingent worker. In order to effectively manage the bill rate, there are a number of factors to keep in mind.

The largest component of any bill rate is the pay rate or direct labor rate. This is the amount of the bill rate that is being paid to the contingent worker by the staffing agency. All too often, only the staffing agency knows this rate and is very reluctant to share it with the buyer. Since the pay rate is the largest component of the bill rate, it is the critical component since the markups used by staffing agencies to determine the bill rate are applied to the pay rate. The second component of the bill rate is the markup that is generally a percentage of the pay rate through which the staffing agency recovers its costs and profits. Depending on the types of contingent workers used, level of competition, buyer’s knowledge, volumes, etc. this markup percentage will range significantly. We have experienced markups from the low 20% range upwards to 80% or more.

A common misconception about staffing agencies is that they have the same pricing for all clients. This is not true. Typically an agency will develop a bill rate structure based on a client's anticipated volume, level of knowledge relative to the applicable bill rates, level of competition, etc. Another misconception is that an agency is always paying the same amount of money for each individual in a particular skill set. Agencies are subject to supply and demand in the applicant market that may result in different pay rates for similar skill sets depending on the current market.

When negotiating a bill rate, having this knowledge can give you an edge in contract negotiation. And comparing current labor compensation on the People Ticker can give you a better idea of what the pay rate should be, helping you to negotiate lower bill rates.

Contingent Worker Rate

2007-02-20T06:42:00.000-08:00

Since the administration of surveys is a time consuming process, their use has been almost exclusively directed toward salary and other compensation data for full time workers or employees. Since the contingent worker market tends to be more volatile, effective information relative to the rates for contingent workers was not available until nextSource developed The People Ticker. However, it should be emphasized that The People Ticker focuses on both contingent and full time workers. Contingent or hourly data is tracked independently of full time or annual data for better accuracy. The hourly rate is not derived by simply dividing the full time salary by 2000 hours or some other estimate of time worked.

Through the technology of the Internet, there is an overwhelming amount of information and data available in the public domain regarding salaries, jobs, skill sets, etc. However, it is very time consuming for the normal user of contingent labor to begin to identify these sources of information and to review, properly classify and analyze the data. The technology of The People Ticker accomplishes all these tasks and brings user-friendly results directly to the user's desktop.

There are many difficulties associated with the gathering and comparing of salary and rate information for full time and contingent workers using existing survey approaches. But you don't have to use this outdated approach. There's no need to have less pay rate information to use for comparison when hiring a contingent worker vs. a full time employee. The People Ticker can offer both these numbers in real time, giving you the knowledge you need to make the most appropriate offer for whatever position that needs to be filled.

Job Compensation Survey

2007-02-16T07:41:00.001-08:00

Companies spend millions of dollars annually to gather salary and compensation data from firms that use the survey approach. These surveys allow companies to compare their salary and compensation plans to those of other companies that participate in the same surveys. Believe it or not, there is a better way. The use of The People Ticker allows companies to compare their rates and salaries to the job / applicant marketplace that exists at any point in time.

Traditional Compensation tools use the surveyed information and make it available in several reporting formats to subscribers. The survey approach allows subscribers to see annual compensation data for individuals and related skill sets that have already been hired at some historical point in time. The problem with this can be that the survey tools have limited, pre-defined job titles and vague experience levels that make any comparison generic, out of date, and only somewhat useful.

On the other hand, The People Ticker is a non-survey based rates and salary tool that provides its users on-demand searching. See hourly / annual salary data related to the next hire in today's market. The People Ticker recognizes that effective rates and salary data cannot be based on standard job titles and that rates and salary data vary based on specific skill sets. It focuses on the Job / Applicant Market rather than historical data related to an embedded base of employees, understanding that the Job / Applicant Market is relatively unstructured due to the varying jobs that companies are recruiting and the varying skill sets of the applicants.

Talent Acquisition Management Solution

2007-02-09T14:30:00.000-08:00

Staffing, recruitment and on-boarding talent is an important part of a successful organization.

The execution of this critical task is complicated by the thousands of agencies, multiple hiring managers and legions of candidates. Very quickly this job can become overwhelming.

An efficient Vendor Management System (VMS) is necessary to manage expectations as well as the resume submittal process. VMS's, like nextSource's TAMS, provide the structure, efficiency and communication needed to eliminate the inefficiencies that plague the traditional procurement process.

What makes TAMS so useful is its straightforward framework. It provides separate modules (e.g. Sourcing, Procurement, Accounting and Reporting) which connect content with data. TAMS also provides staffing agencies, hiring managers, payroll and accounting with their own respective, customizable views of the entire process. While providing this insight to so many different people, TAMS still allows the daily workflow to be managed centrally through a designated onsite manager or by the corporation.

TAMS is also a great way to keep track of time on a project. For example, when the TAMS administrator approves a submittal from an agency, an e-mail is sent to the hiring manager, alerting him/her that new talent has been submitted whose profile is available for viewing. After reviewing, the hiring manager can either request an interview or decline the candidate. If the candidate is declined, the manager is prompted to provide comments to the submitting agency to improve the quality of matching for future submittals. If the hiring manager requests an interview with the candidate, TAMS will generate an email informing the agency of the manager's availability for a telephone or in-person interview.

To make things even better, by using TAMS you can augment an organization's pool of qualified candidates by extending their reach to multiple agencies. When additional agencies are added to the preferred vendor list, TAMS integrates them seamlessly by consolidating billable hours and fees across all external staffing agencies providing a single invoice to the customer.

Benchmark Salary

2007-02-02T14:29:00.000-08:00

When looking to acquire additional staffing, intelligence is key. Knowing what jobs are paying in which locations can give any business the inside information they need to put together enticing offers without going over-budget. The People Ticker gives an edge to anyone looking to acquire the best talent at competitive rates.

How much does an accountant with 3 years of experience make in Chicago? This information can be found quickly and easily with a single search. In fact, The People Ticker can have it scroll by in real time, with numbers that take the current economy into consideration. This devise was created by compiling valuable input from many trusted sources and it then presenting the data in an understandable and convenient way. It is an accurate and efficient method of figuring out a benchmark salary.

Every business knows that determining a pay rate should be carefully considered in order to get the most qualified workers at the most affordable costs. Yet many companies do not have the time and resources available to do the necessary research. Why rely on buying outdated survey results for salary insight? The People Ticker can shed light on this process and give businesses the knowledge needed to set the right price for the market.

Welcome to the nextSource Blog!

2007-01-30T14:27:00.000-08:00

Human capital management can be complicated and the intricacies of the industry can be difficult to decipher. This blog will discuss the potential pitfalls and optimal solutions for the day-to-day problems with procurement, staffing, recruiting and HRMS.

We'll discuss ways to keep up to date on salary benchmarking, use Web-based administration tools, and create job postings. You'll be able to use these tips to start reducing costs and attracting high quality vendors and employees.

If you're interested in offering the most competitive and appropriate compensation for the best available workers, stay tuned for details on the most recent upgrades to our famous tool, The People Ticker.

We'll also be discussing our premier piece of software, the Talent Acquisition Management Solution (TAMS). TAMS streamlines the entire process of working with contractors and consultants, reducing overhead, and managing the entire lifecycle of your projects.

What's going on in the industry? What's going on at nextSource? What does it all mean? Find out here on the nextSource blog.