IT staffing and contract hiring firms live on requirements, candidate submissions and placements. Their own recruiters work on targets, high churn and constant pressure, while the people they place may sit on their payroll too.
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Share your requirementsAn IT staffing firm supplies engineers, testers and analysts to client companies on contract or permanent roles. Inside, the team is account managers who hold client relationships, recruiters who source and screen candidates, sourcers who search job boards and networks, a delivery head and a small back office. Recruiters work against requirement counts, daily call and submission numbers, and clients that change needs overnight. Placed contract consultants may sit on the firm's own payroll and need onboarding, attendance records and a point of contact, while consultants between assignments sit on a bench. Pay often includes a large incentive tied to closures, which creates rivalry over requirements. Recruiters learn client preferences and candidate networks quickly, and rival firms hire them with offers of a bigger share. See also HR for professional services.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in IT staffing firms. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Calls, profiles and submissions are counted daily, and recruiters who miss the number feel it before any placement is made.
Two recruiters claim the same closure, and a payout calculation becomes a monthly argument.
A client freezes a role after days of sourcing, and the recruiter's effort is written off with no recognition.
A rival firm hires them for a larger share, and the candidate network goes along with them.
Engineers between assignments wait with little contact, and the best ones accept another offer.
An offered candidate fails to join, and the recruiter's closure, the account manager's credibility and the client's trust all take a hit.
A consultant works at the client's site under the client's manager, yet depends on the firm for leave, pay queries and complaints.
New recruiters get a script and a target, little coaching and a high chance of leaving within months.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Compensation, Payroll and Benefits; Retention and Attrition Management; Onboarding and Probation. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a IT staffing firms business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Who claims a closure, how shared requirements are split and when payout is due, in writing and the same for all.
Who claims a closure, how shared requirements are split and when payout is due, in writing and the same for all. Test the plan against pay benchmarks.
A buddy, call listening, a stepped target and a weekly review.
A buddy, call listening, a stepped target and a weekly review. Plan it inside onboarding.
A named coordinator, a weekly check-in and a record of skills, so the next assignment finds the right person.
A named coordinator, a weekly check-in and a record of skills, so the next assignment finds the right person.
Attendance, leave and client-site timesheets in one place, so the firm and client agree.
Attendance, leave and client-site timesheets in one place, so the firm and client agree. See attendance and leave rules.
A shared system for contacts and notes, with rules for use and for leavers, so relationships belong to the firm too.
A shared system for contacts and notes, with rules for use and for leavers, so relationships belong to the firm too. Hold rules in documentation.
A named person consultants can reach about work, pay or behaviour at the client, with a record of what was done.
A named person consultants can reach about work, pay or behaviour at the client, with a record of what was done. Link to grievance steps.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Fixed pay and incentive mix that is fair, clear and hard to dispute.
A first ninety days that gives new recruiters coaching instead of just targets.
Records for consultants at client sites and on the bench.
A route for consultants to raise problems from a client's site.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
6 min readRead article
Simple variable pay structures for product and engineering teams: four options, why individual metrics backfire, a build plan and a one page outline to adapt.
6 min readRead article
What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
6 min readRead article
A first-week plan for bringing in an outside specialist: what access to give, how to protect client data, and the confidentiality steps to settle on day one.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Put the rules on one page, including who claims shared work, and apply them the same way every month. Most disputes are about rules that were left open.
Keep contacts in a shared system, make the plan fair and pay on time. You cannot lock people in, but you can give them less reason to go.
Keep contact, record skills, offer short learning and tell them honestly about the pipeline. Silence pushes them to other offers.
Stay in touch with candidates between offer and joining, confirm notice and counter-offer risks early and keep a backup. Treat it as a process issue, not one person's failure.
It depends on your contract with the client and the staff. Write down who handles leave, pay queries and complaints and confirm legal duties with a qualified professional.
How recruiters are paid and coached, how often they leave, how bench consultants are looked after and who they call from a client site. An incentive rule, a ninety-day plan or a bench routine is a likely start. We do not supply staff ourselves. Scope, timing and fees are put in writing after that talk.
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