Let HR Do It

Here’s a radical concept: Let the HR department do the organization’scontingent hiring directly. It knows how to hire. It understands how to use jobboards. It probably has an applicant-tracking system for permanent hires. It cansave money.

So says Gene Zaino, CEO of Contractors Resources, a company that providesadministrative and business-management services for independent contractors andacts as the third-party employer of record for the companies that engage them.

“The HR department has the talent to recruit these people, or even justsource them and send them to the chief information officer [who often does IThiring] or the line managers,” Zaino says. “We’re saying, Wake up! Give HRa shot at filling the job in three days or so. Let them present three or fourpeople on a contract basis, rather than going to a staffing company.”

Granted, Zaino is not a disinterested party. Companies that hire ContractorsResources as the third-party employer of record pay it 1.2 percent of thecontractor’s gross hourly wage. The idea, Zaino says, is that companies cansave 20 percent or more by using his service, which focuses on consultantemployment services, and not on recruiting contractor talent.

Zaino says that one client, a major financial brokerage firm that has had asmany as 2,200 IT independent consultants and now has 1,400, saved $40 million in2000 by sourcing its own contractors, while Contractors Resources handled theemployer-of-record duties.

A small consultant management group in the company is the central point forthe requisitions, Zaino says. Instead of managing vendors, the group startedfinding contractors on its own. “They’re seeing there’s a tremendousamount of dollars they can save.”

Would that approach work in any company? Zaino thinks so. “It might take anHR executive with a little bit of leadership to bring this forward,” he says.”The mind-set with HR that needs to be adjusted is this: the contingentworkforce is a valuable part of the workforce. They need to start learning aboutit, embracing it, and adding value to it.”

Workforce, March 2002, p. 52 — Subscribe Now!