Hiring a temporary staffing company doesn’t have to be a long, stressful process. This article will give you the knowledge necessary to make the right choice.

Of course, this is not a decision you can make within a matter of minutes. And, it is not a decision you can should make without first completing the appropriate amount of research.

When seeking the best temporary staffing company, focus on what each provider offers in these two areas:

• Planning
• Execution

When you pay attention to the details of these components, you will find yourself making the right decisions along the way. Otherwise, you could be stuck with a company just sending you bodies and not taking into consideration how important it is to find the right person for the job.

Planning

Although you may not be directly involved with the planning process, you need to find a temporary staffing company that puts the necessary amount of time and resources into this component.

There are six distinct details that must be accounted for during this phase:

1. Objectives. Since no two clients are the same, it is important to hire a temporary staffing company that takes the time to learn more about the client’s objectives.

What are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to increase sales or are you more interested in visibility? Reputable temporary staffing companies will take the time to understand your objectives in order to ensure a successful campaign.

2. Filter. Most temporary staffing companies have the ability to reach out to a large database of people, hoping to score a lucky hit and find the right professionals for your project.

You want a temporary staffing company that realizes the importance of filtering. Does it really make sense for a company to reach out to people in Toronto to work in Montreal? Of course not.

Before making a decision, ask the company which types of filters they use. This could be geographic, skill-sets, language or their looks.

3. Availability. This is not always a big deal, but when it comes to “high staff volume” events it must be taken into consideration.

At Tigris, for example, we color code our availability charts and enter each person’s availability as a means of easily calculating how many people are available vs. how many we need and to easily identify who is available if we need to make a switch. When you’re scheduling dozens of people or hundreds, this is invaluable.

4. Selection. There is no denying the importance of hiring a temporary staffing company with a variety of available staff members. But does this really mean you want to hire each and every person? Definitely not.

The selection process is one of the most important steps in making your event a success. You need to hire a company that knows what it takes to move through the selection process in a clear and concise manner.

In some cases, our clients trust our judgment – but in many cases we provide photos and bios to help them make the selection themselves. This gets them involved and helps us better understand what (and who) they’re looking for.

5. Confirmation. At some point, the team selected for your project needs to be fully confirmed. During this step, those who have been selected are double confirmed in case anything has changes since their availability was initially collected. These steps are all required to ensure maximum consistency.

6. Training. It is one thing to find a temporary staffing company that is able to hire the appropriate workers for your event or project. It is another thing entirely to be assured that the training process is taken care of.

At the very least, every person selected should be provided a training package. This will include everything and anything they need to know about the event. The last thing you would want is a company that only gives the bare minimum leading to inexperienced and uninformed staff representing your brand onsite.

Your team needs to be fully prepared from the start. This is particularly true if there is no onsite training or conference call briefing.

Execution

When hiring a temporary staffing company, you want to find a provider that has a solid grasp of the planning process. That being said, if they don’t know the first thing about execution you need to look elsewhere.

There are four details that make up the execution portion of your event:

1. Reconfirmation. Two to three days before the event, every team member should be reminded of the pertinent details. This reconfirms their availability, which helps avoid any last second surprises.

Note: this is a very important piece of the puzzle if there is a large gap of time between booking and execution.

2. Check-in. Each and every worker needs to be checked in upon arriving on site. Without this, you can expect mass chaos from the start.

If somebody has yet to check-in within 15 minutes of the start time, the event manager should reach out via phone for an update. This helps increase reliability and consistency to avoid situations where staff have not shown up or are late.

3. Post-event. Just because an event has come to an end doesn’t mean it is over for good. A good temporary staffing company should document the event with professional photos. These photos should be submitted without delay along with feedback and a final invoice.

Within a couple of days or sooner, you should receive a full report from your company regarding the finer details of the event.

4. Social media. This is part of the post-event process. It is more important than ever for event photos to be shared via social media. This helps keep the event live even after it has come to an end. It also greatly extends the reach of your promotion for maximum impact.

At Tigris, that’s what we like to call “The Power of Presence”

What Next?

With this advice guiding you, hiring the right temporary staffing company to ensure success should be an enjoyable and effective process.