Contract Staffing LinkedIn® Group for Recruiters

Where do you turn when you hit a contract staffing question and nobody in your office has run into it before? In June 2012, we tried to answer that with a LinkedIn® group called "Contract Staffing for Recruiters." FoxHire was still operating as Top Echelon Contracting at the time, and the group gave recruiters a place to find contract staffing articles, training videos and tools, discussions, and special offers. We encouraged members to ask questions, join discussions, and share what they knew.

We've since retired the link to that 2012 group. The need behind it hasn't gone anywhere, though. Recruiters adding contract placements to a direct-hire desk still need reliable information and a few people who've done it before.

Where to Learn the Contract Staffing Basics

Start with the fundamentals: how contract placements are priced, who employs the worker, and what happens with payroll and taxes. These are good places to build that knowledge:

• The FoxHire blog. We've been writing about contract staffing for recruiters since 2010. Two good starting points are six ways to start offering contract staffing and the top contract staffing myths recruiters believe.
• Industry associations. The American Staffing Association offers education and certification resources, including staffing professional certifications and on-demand webinars.
• Government sources. The U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division publishes fact sheets on wages, overtime, and misclassification that answer many of the compliance questions contract recruiters run into.

Where to Find Community

Reading gets you started, but much of what makes contract staffing work comes from people who've already made the mistakes. Look for:

• Peer and split networks. Recruiters who share job orders often share what they've learned about contract terms, rates, and difficult clients too.
• Local staffing associations and recruiter meetups. In-person groups are where you'll hear which clients pay slowly and which states have tricky rules.
• Professional social networks. Recruiter discussion groups still exist on LinkedIn and elsewhere. The ones worth your time are the groups where members actually answer each other's questions.
• Your EOR partner. Your EOR's operations team fields onboarding, payroll, and compliance questions every day, so put them to work for you.

Questions Worth Bringing to Your Network

A community is only as useful as the questions you bring to it. Here are a few that experienced contract recruiters tend to have strong opinions about:

• How do you set a markup that covers employer costs and still leaves you a healthy margin?
• What goes into a contract staffing agreement to protect your conversion fee if the client hires your contractor directly?
• How do you respond when a client wants to pay a worker as a 1099 contractor?
• What changes when you place a worker in a state you've never hired in before?

You'll get different answers from different people, and that's the point. The disagreements show you where the real judgment calls are.

Turning What You Learn Into Placements

For many recruiters, the hesitation about that first contract placement comes down to payroll, taxes, and compliance. That's the part FoxHire takes on. As an Employer of Record (EOR), we become the W-2 employer of your contract workers and handle payroll, taxes, benefits, and compliance in all 50 states. We also fund payroll when your client pays on NET 15 to NET 30 terms, so you aren't floating it. You keep the client relationship and set your own bill rate.

The Takeaway

The 2012 group link is gone, but the idea behind it still works. Pick one or two sources you trust, find a few peers who'll pick up the phone, and ask your questions early. Your first contract placement will go a lot smoother for it.

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