The use of contractors is often the best way of rapidly increasing the staff on either a portion of a project or for a short-term requirement. If work is well defined, it can be assigned to contractors for completion while your permanent staff focuses on planning, staffing, and executing longer-term projects.

If the organization has developed a partnership with a contract services company, they can jointly ensure the requirements are understood and that the recruiting effort is properly timed. Additionally, when a contract service firm gains familiarity with your organization, it has the ability to select candidates who meet your technical requirement needs and who match the cultural and ethical requirements of your organization.

When to Use Contractors

Immediate Access to Special Skills and Expertise
Because a contract service agency can pro-vide you with technical experts, you have immediate access to special skills and expertise that might not otherwise exist in your organization. It is advantageous that these specialists have often been involved in numerous work situations, bringing to your organization depth and breadth of experience in their, area of expertise. Consequently, they are immediately up-to-speed, eliminating otherwise costly training over-head associated with permanent employees.

Meet Project Deadlines
When faced with difficulties meeting project deadlines, hiring contractors can immediately add human resource capacity needed to bring the project back on schedule.

Reduce the Necessity for Layoffs
Most organizations experience significant peaks and valleys in workloads, with corresponding fluctuations in need for employment resources. Staffing with contractors allows an organization to address increases in workloads without incurring the responsibility and the expense of permanent hiring. To that end, US companies are increasingly recognizing that significant portions of labor can be treated as variable costs, rather than the concept of labor as a fixed cost prevalent in the post-war period until the early 1980s.

Trial Hiring
Hiring and training your permanent staff can be a costly and time-consuming process. Many organizations have found that contractors provide a cost-effective means to satisfy temporary work requirements and, at the same time can be assessed as potential candidates for permanent employment-often at no additional cost.