Hiring Exchange - A HotGigs blog

Use HotGigs to cut development costs

Out of the blue today I got a call from a staffing manager at...well, at a prominent west-coast retailer, thanking HotGigs for saving them a quarter of a million dollars.

They'd needed some difficult development work done in Oracle, and went to Oracle for help. The price was high--higher than they'd expected--but they figured they were stuck.

Then they thought of HotGigs. They didn't expect to find anyone with such a high level of expertise but they gave us a shot. It worked. They easily found a highly skilled Oracle consultant who's giving them exactly what they need.

But here's the best part: By using HotGigs.com they found a consultant at a local consulting firm and will pay about $250,000 less on the annual contract.

That's a significant savings, and I think it demonstrates the power of a staffing exchange such as HotGigs.com. HotGigs has more than 50,000 contractors at every skill level, and they're pre-ranked and pre-referenced. They're a deep, rich talent pool that lets you dial in the level of expertise you need at a fair price.

Later--

--Doug

Can you identify your contingent workforce risk?

Hi! I’m Elaine Taylor, and I advise companies on contingent workforce management (CWM). Doug’s asked me to join HotGigs’ HiringExchange blog and discuss issues in this area.

These days, risk management is a big aspect of my business—virtually every company manager I talk to knows there can be risk associated with using contingent workers. But if I ask, “what risk is your company most concerned about?” the answers vary widely.

Many have taken measures to mitigate contingent workforce risk. Most often, though,  few realize how little protection they’ve achieved until there’s a crisis—a high-visibility, costly liability. And then, of course, it’s too late.

CW risk management is a complex, multi-faceted problem. In my experience, a company in trouble over contingent workers has most commonly done one of three things:

1. The company addressed only one or two of the many categories of contingent workforce risk. Often, addressing only part of the risk actually exacerbates other categories or can outright create new risks.
2. It failed to involve all the key stakeholders in planning, which frequently means that not everybody buys into the plan, leading to limited adoption and sporadic compliance.
3. The company underestimated the complexity of contingent workforce risk mitigation, approaching it as if anyone at any level of experience could successfully create the solution. Some of the most egregious mistakes I’ve encountered were created by well-meaning HR managers, attorneys or procurement departments with no background in contingent workforce issues.

To develop a comprehensive strategy for mitigating contingent workforce-related risk you must first identify the primary categories of risk.

Legal risk: “Employee misclassification”/co-employment, and all areas related to compliance with the numerous and ever-changing, applicable tax and labor laws.

Business risk: Security breaches, IP theft, industry regulatory (for companies that operate in or provide services to regulated industries) and/or Sarbanes-Oxley non-compliance, any of which can result in governmental audits and/or class action lawsuits.

Brand risk: The possibility of brand value deterioration, such as through publicity-attracting lawsuits and/or negative media attention.

In my next post, I’ll discuss how you build a strategy to manage these risk categories. In the meantime, please feel free to comment!

--Elaine

Elaine Taylor is a subject matter expert in the area of contingent workforce management (CWM). She consults with Fortune 500 companies to help them develop CWM strategies that effectively reduce the cost of their temporary labor resources (by as much as 22%), while minimizing “employee misclassification” risk and introducing business process best practices.  She has published broadly in the area of CWM, including co-authoring HR.com’s Vendor Management System Buyer’s Guide. Former and current clients include Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., Entergy Corporation, BP, American Family Insurance, Ryder Transportation & Logistics, Northrop Grumman, Dupont, Timken Company, and Royal Bank of Canada.

Makeover!

Here at HotGigs headquarters in Minnesota we’ve got our first real snow on the ground and our first real 2007 milestone: We’ve totally redesigned our HotGigs.com exchange.

It’s only the first of many exciting changes you’ll be seeing this year. We’ve made the site easier to use, and have built an architecture that will allow us to quickly add new products and services.

So…take us for a test drive! There’s a lot to see and do on the new HotGigs.com. Some of the most notable features:

Easier navigation. The HotGigs.com exchange serves three audiences (consultants, staffing firms and hiring companies) and each has its own set of requirements, so we've given each a custom portal. For example, you’ll be able to quickly find and manage the tasks that HR employees and hiring managers tell us they perform most often, directly from the hiring company portal.

More help in maximizing staffing effectiveness. We’ve gathered the best experts in the industry to post to HiringExchange, our new blog for hiring companies. They’ll discuss how to streamline your staffing operations, use the Web to improve your hiring, find and manage your own pool of contract talent and ensure you’re working effectively with staffing firms. We'll also use it to announce new features and promotions.

You can reach the blog in our new hiring company portal…and receive notice of new postings by mail or through our RSS feed. By the way, the debut of HiringExchange also means we’ll be discontinuing the HotGigs newsletter. If you're a newsletter subscriber, we'll switch your subscription to mail notifications whenever we update HiringExchange.

New Rate Exchange. We’ve opened our new Rate Exchange, which lets you find and monitor the going rates for key skills. You can report the rates you’re paying and see what other companies pay for the same skills, a great way to make sure you’re competitive in your marketplace.

In addition, stay tuned for HotGigs’ 2007 IT Rate Guide—we’re releasing it later this month. This is a big deal for the staffing industry, which uses it to set competitive rates for contract work. You can purchase yours online today for just $25, or contact your HotGigs representative to see if you qualify for a free copy.

We'll be adding great new features--and even more granular billing data--throughout 2007.

More help filling full-time positions. Our agency referral program helps you fill full-time positions. Send out one request, and 12,000 staffing firms will set to work filling your job…at the rates you set.

More contractors. We’re launching a major marketing effort this month to bring in new contractors. We estimate we’ll add at least 100,000 new contractors to our membership by the end of the year, so this is a great time to update your HotGigs account and get in gear for 2007.

While you’re there, let us know what you like (and don’t like) about our new direction. HotGigs.com is definitely a work in progress, and we welcome your feedback to help us make it even better.

What a great start to a new year!

--Doug

Just watch!

Recognition isn’t always necessary, but it sure is nice. That’s why I was thrilled to find HotGigs had been named one of “20 Companies to Watch in 2007” by Twin Cities Business, a local business magazine.

It really warmed up a cold, windy Minnetonka day for me. Minnesota is chock full of influential movers and shakers—Target, General Mills, Hormel, Cargill, United Healthcare, to name a few—so getting on a local watchlist is a real achievement.

I think their recognition is due (at least in part) to the increasingly important role that HotGigs contractors are playing in your business. You—and many other companies--need contract workers who can hit the ground running, go in and solve hard problems and rapidly evolve the business to meet new opportunities…then move on.

Increasingly, I’m seeing the top experts in their fields shift from working for others to doing contract projects for businesses like yours. It’s a win-win for both sides—they gain the freedom of self-employment while you get top talent on a pay-as-needed basis.

And in some areas, such as information technology, many companies are planning to shift their employee:contractor ratio from perhaps 80:20 to 60:40 or more. At least one multinational we’ve talked with says that by 2009 they’ll have completely reversed that ratio and contractors will make up a full 80 percent of their IT workforce!

That kind of shift requires a huge rethinking of your staffing strategies, and it’s something most Web job boards aren’t prepared to handle.

We can, and I think that’s why a lot of industry analysts are keeping an eye on us. We’re already a leading center for bridging the gap between contractors, staffing firms and companies--our members are performing more than 3 million searches every quarter. We’ve developed great tools like Jobs2Web, which helps you use the Web to build your own contract talent pools, and ContractCentral, which helps you automate and streamline your relationships with staffing firms.

We're adding features and products as fast as we can, but we need to hear from you. Where do you need help in evolving your staffing processes? What features would you most like to see on HotGigs.com? Your answers can help us make HotGigs.com a more valuable tool in your business arsenal. And if you haven't logged in to your HotGigs.com account recently, stop by...then tell me if you like what you see.

So drop me a line...and watch us grow!