Early Monday morning, a plant manager needs 30 more people on the second shift by Friday. At another company's headquarters, a procurement leader is working to bring 40 staffing suppliers across three regions under one set of standards. Both need a staffing partner, and it could be the same one, but they'll measure it by different standards.
A few basics apply to almost any search, including industry expertise, a strong fill rate, and clear terms. With those foundational requirements met, the criteria adjust to match the work you need done. Workforce needs tend to fall into three levels, from filling individual roles to running a workforce program to handing over a project or business function. The plant manager and the procurement leader are at different points on that range, which changes what each one should ask a potential staffing partner.
With roughly 27,000 staffing and recruiting companies operating in the U.S., you need to narrow the field. Defining the work you need done is the fastest way to start.
For a simple, one-time need, a transactional fill may be enough, and speed, cost, and fill rate work well as criteria. As volume builds, the questions get more complicated. Recurring requisitions, hiring across multiple sites or disciplines, and goals that depend on assembling an entire team call for a partner that can run the program around the placements. Many employers have needs at more than one of the three levels at once. When that’s the case, look for a partner with range that can grow alongside your organization.
Each level of need puts a different kind of pressure on a staffing partner, so the criteria change as the work gets more complex.
Filling individual roles is where most employers start, and employers judge partners on how quickly they deliver people who fit the role and stay in it. The need might be a contract engineer for a six-month project, a direct hire for a hard-to-fill lab position, or 200 associates for a distribution center before peak season. Three criteria apply to nearly any search, and a fourth matters most for high-volume hiring.
Choose recruiters who know the work. A recruiter with a background in your field speaks credibly with candidates who have other options and can tell which resume details point to real experience. Ask what share of a firm's recruiters come from the discipline you're hiring for and how long they've worked in it. At Kelly, for example, 73% of science recruiters have science backgrounds, and engineering recruiters average more than 10 years of experience in the field.
Ask how they reach people who aren't applying. The strongest candidates for specialized roles are often employed and not looking. A partner with an established passive talent network reaches them first, and that reach should show up in its placement data. At Kelly Science & Clinical, for instance, 35% of placements come from off-market candidates, people a job posting would never have reached.
Expect questions before resumes. A partner who sends resumes within hours may be moving fast without understanding the role. Look for one that asks why the position opened, what has made it hard to fill, and what separates people who succeed in it from people who leave. Those answers tell the recruiter which candidates to pursue and which to pass on, and strong staffing agencies build that intake step into how they work, so the first resumes you see are already a close match.
For high-volume roles, insist on consistent screening and safety. A partner built for high-volume industrial and warehouse hiring screens every candidate the same way, completes safety orientation before anyone's first shift, and tracks attendance and early turnover to see whether placements are holding. Ask for a firm’s days away, restricted, or transferred (DART) rate, which tracks injuries serious enough to cause lost or modified work, and how that rate compares with the average the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes for your industry. Kelly evaluates every worksite before its employees start there, then follows up with site-specific safety training and regular reviews of incident data.
A workforce program makes sense once hiring runs continuously across many roles, sites, or suppliers. At this level, you're looking for an enterprise workforce solutions partner whose value comes from how well it runs the system around the placements. Programs take a few common forms.
Governance comes first. Few large employers have one supplier for every need, so the program partner has to manage other suppliers fairly, measure them consistently, and control co-employment and classification risk across all of them. Strong programs bring the same discipline to managing supplier performance that they bring to filling roles.
Consolidation matters too. A biotech company might need an accountant, three clinical research associates, and a validation engineer in the same quarter. Separate agencies mean separate contracts, separate onboarding, and no single view of spend. A partner with specialty divisions, or a program that coordinates specialty suppliers, gives you one point of accountability without giving up expertise. For global programs, ask how many vetted suppliers a partner can draw on in each country where you hire. For a sense of scale, Kelly works with more than 5,400 suppliers across 70+ countries.
Before committing to a program partner, ask:
An employer launching a product line, opening a contact center, or running inspections across dozens of sites often knows the outcome it needs before it knows who should do the work. Statements of work, managed services, and business process outsourcing (BPO) put a partner in charge of that result.
An order for seven engineers is a staffing request, while a partner hired to help build an airplane has to design the team itself, from the mix of engineers, technicians, and project managers to when each person starts and how the work gets managed. The employer measures success by milestones and deliverables, and the partner manages the hours and staffing behind them.
Evaluate accountability first. A partner delivering a project or function should own the operational risks that come with it, including service levels, day-to-day workforce management, and in many cases safety liability. Because the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) assigns injury recordkeeping to whichever employer supervises the work day to day, a BPO provider that runs the operation typically keeps the injury log. Ask a prospective partner which risks it will own, and confirm the supervision structure matches what the contract says.
A partner confident in its results will accept terms that share the risk. When one automotive manufacturer expanded its BPO program with Kelly to three parts distribution centers, the agreement included gain-share and pain-share terms tied to service levels. The newest site had been the client's worst performer, and within two months it ranked first among its major locations, with $784,000 in combined annual savings. Terms like these keep a partner focused on the outcome you're paying for, especially when it takes over an operation that has struggled under another provider.
Workforce needs rarely stay at one level for long, and four signs point to a partner that can adjust with you.
They learn from repeat requisitions. When the same roles keep reopening, the cause is usually in the job or the workplace, such as below-market pay, a difficult shift schedule, or a manager whose teams turn over. A strong partner spots those trends across your requisitions and brings them to you with market data before you have to ask.
They keep trained talent close. Contract workers who finish an assignment take their training and site knowledge with them. A partner that manages redeployment matches those workers to your next opening, so the time you spent training them keeps paying off.
They recommend a different model when the numbers call for one. A partner focused on the long term will tell you when a recurring contract role would cost less as a direct hire, or when orders scattered across several agencies would run better as a managed program. That advice can cost the partner short-term revenue, which is part of what makes it credible.
Their client relationships have expanded over time. Ask for examples of clients whose engagements grew from individual placements into programs or outsourced functions. Life science MSP programs at Kelly, for example, average more than 11 years of client tenure.
The right staffing partner meets you at your current level of need and has the range to support the next one. The plant manager staffing a second shift and the procurement leader bringing 40 suppliers under one set of standards will start their searches with different questions, and a partner with real range can answer both. Kelly works across all three levels, from filling specialized and high-volume roles to running workforce programs and delivering projects and business functions. Whether your next need is a second shift or a supplier network, talk with a Kelly workforce expert about the level of support that fits.