The State of Contract Talent Management and the Role of HR

21 January, 2009

9 of 12

While organizations are eager to obtain talented contractors from any source, they are surprisingly self-sufficient in getting the people they need. Although 70 percent of our respondents sometimes acquire contract talent through staffing firms and 56 percent from consulting firms, a full 50 percent report that they do not use a Managed Service Provider or staffing firms to source and pay their contract talent.

The majority of those that source and pay their contract talent directly appear to do so without the benefit of Managed Service Providers (MSP) and staffing firms or Vendor Management Systems (VMS). Similarly, according to research done late last year by Staffing Industry Associates, 40 percent of organizations manage their contingent workforce programs internally, compared to 26 percent who work with an MSP and 13 percent who engage a master staffing supplier. Interestingly, 21 percent use a combination of all three.

Taken together, this can be interpreted to mean that in many, if not most organizations, contract talent is acquired in a decentralized fashion, with few controls and little uniformity; if so, this is a situation that can easily lead to wasted resources and lower quality of hire.

9 of 12