Recruiting. Its Personal.
tepid times call for temporary solutions
Nationally, unemployment remains low, especially in the professional sectors where it is expected to remain at 2.7 percent when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its data for December. The S&P 500 Index is up almost 100 points on the year. Yet, economists and analysts alike continue to predict impending doom.
Employers are increasingly torn between building capacity to meet demand and wanting to stay lean in case downturns materialize. For a growing number of companies, especially professional firms, relief is coming in the form of contract based staffing.
While once thought of as a stopgap for vacationing administrative staff, temporary contract workers have begun to take a vital role in many high - paying white collar fields, a trend likely to continue as the economy remains unpredictable in 2008.
The legal profession has likely seen one of the biggest recent shifts to contract staffing. In 1998, the American Bar Association Ethics Committee presented a formal opinion governing the use of contract lawyers. Since then the practice has swelled in popularity, especially among small - and mid - sized firms. The staffing requirements of a large case can add dozens of attorneys for document review and other tasks during the discovery phase who won’t be needed as the case moves to trial. In larger firms with hundreds if not thousands of cases moving through the pipeline, it is simply a matter of managing talent. For a firm with only one or two hundred attorneys though, the balancing act can be thrown off by just one large case or a few more than planned hitting discovery simultaneously.
“Ten years ago firms would have to manage with the staff they had, but the modern legal firm model is for the firm to be more of a conduit between clients and a staff of contract lawyers,” says Matthew Reitter, director of MRINetwork Contract Staffing. “It’s a dramatic shift in how legal services are delivered that has gone virtually unnoticed to consumers.”
Aside from the legal profession, any company that works on a project basis is ripe for contract staffing, says Reitter, who sees high demand in IT, financial and accounting services, engineering, architecture and pharmaceuticals.
“When dealing with sudden shifts in staffing needs, a fully permanent workforce can keep a company from having the ability to adapt and to take advantage of market shifts,” adds Jalbert. “Until companies can know their needs for the next three to five years, they should have at least a portion of their staff on contingency.”
