When hiring from an agency, there is a pay rate that the worker is getting and a bill rate which the agency charges and the difference is the markup. The People Ticker can give you an idea of what kind of markups to expect. The markups displayed as part of The People Ticker's search results represent an average of the markup data points that we have collected in The People Ticker database. Since we are collecting markup information from a number of sources including hundreds of agencies and thousands of individuals, the range of markups captured vary widely. Some of the most common factors that contribute to the variation in the reported markups are:

• Expertise of buying organization
• Corporate contracts
• Competitive solicitations
• Type of skill set, i.e. programmer vs. receptionist vs. warehouse worker
• Volume of business
• Relationship of contingent worker with agency, i.e. W2 employee, independent contractor,etc.
• Benefits paid by agency for contingent worker (Paid holidays & vacation, medical coverage, life insurance, 401K, training, etc.)
• Length of assignment
• Other overhead and general & administrative expenses
• Profit

For a company working with contingent workers, understanding the markup can offer insight needed for making hiring decisions. Is it worth the extra expense for more expertise? Is it worth hiring more workers in order to get a lower rate per worker? If you are unhappy with a current agency, is it worth finding a new one that you may not have a relationship with? When you understand all the elements of the markup, it can make it easier to evaluate and negotiate.

When dealing with a temp agency, the easiest way to work toward getting the best deal is to negotiate a relatively low bill rate. This is the amount that a company pays to a staffing agency for the services of a contingent worker. In order to effectively manage the bill rate, there are a number of factors to keep in mind.

The largest component of any bill rate is the pay rate or direct labor rate. This is the amount of the bill rate that is being paid to the contingent worker by the staffing agency. All too often, only the staffing agency knows this rate and is very reluctant to share it with the buyer. Since the pay rate is the largest component of the bill rate, it is the critical component since the markups used by staffing agencies to determine the bill rate are applied to the pay rate. The second component of the bill rate is the markup that is generally a percentage of the pay rate through which the staffing agency recovers its costs and profits. Depending on the types of contingent workers used, level of competition, buyer’s knowledge, volumes, etc. this markup percentage will range significantly. We have experienced markups from the low 20% range upwards to 80% or more.

A common misconception about staffing agencies is that they have the same pricing for all clients. This is not true. Typically an agency will develop a bill rate structure based on a client's anticipated volume, level of knowledge relative to the applicable bill rates, level of competition, etc. Another misconception is that an agency is always paying the same amount of money for each individual in a particular skill set. Agencies are subject to supply and demand in the applicant market that may result in different pay rates for similar skill sets depending on the current market.

When negotiating a bill rate, having this knowledge can give you an edge in contract negotiation. And comparing current labor compensation on the People Ticker can give you a better idea of what the pay rate should be, helping you to negotiate lower bill rates.

Since the administration of surveys is a time consuming process, their use has been almost exclusively directed toward salary and other compensation data for full time workers or employees. Since the contingent worker market tends to be more volatile, effective information relative to the rates for contingent workers was not available until nextSource developed The People Ticker. However, it should be emphasized that The People Ticker focuses on both contingent and full time workers. Contingent or hourly data is tracked independently of full time or annual data for better accuracy. The hourly rate is not derived by simply dividing the full time salary by 2000 hours or some other estimate of time worked.

Through the technology of the Internet, there is an overwhelming amount of information and data available in the public domain regarding salaries, jobs, skill sets, etc. However, it is very time consuming for the normal user of contingent labor to begin to identify these sources of information and to review, properly classify and analyze the data. The technology of The People Ticker accomplishes all these tasks and brings user-friendly results directly to the user's desktop.

There are many difficulties associated with the gathering and comparing of salary and rate information for full time and contingent workers using existing survey approaches. But you don't have to use this outdated approach. There's no need to have less pay rate information to use for comparison when hiring a contingent worker vs. a full time employee. The People Ticker can offer both these numbers in real time, giving you the knowledge you need to make the most appropriate offer for whatever position that needs to be filled.

Companies spend millions of dollars annually to gather salary and compensation data from firms that use the survey approach. These surveys allow companies to compare their salary and compensation plans to those of other companies that participate in the same surveys. Believe it or not, there is a better way. The use of The People Ticker allows companies to compare their rates and salaries to the job / applicant marketplace that exists at any point in time.

Traditional Compensation tools use the surveyed information and make it available in several reporting formats to subscribers. The survey approach allows subscribers to see annual compensation data for individuals and related skill sets that have already been hired at some historical point in time. The problem with this can be that the survey tools have limited, pre-defined job titles and vague experience levels that make any comparison generic, out of date, and only somewhat useful.

On the other hand, The People Ticker is a non-survey based rates and salary tool that provides its users on-demand searching. See hourly / annual salary data related to the next hire in today's market. The People Ticker recognizes that effective rates and salary data cannot be based on standard job titles and that rates and salary data vary based on specific skill sets. It focuses on the Job / Applicant Market rather than historical data related to an embedded base of employees, understanding that the Job / Applicant Market is relatively unstructured due to the varying jobs that companies are recruiting and the varying skill sets of the applicants.

Staffing, recruitment and on-boarding talent is an important part of a successful organization.

The execution of this critical task is complicated by the thousands of agencies, multiple hiring managers and legions of candidates. Very quickly this job can become overwhelming.

An efficient Vendor Management System (VMS) is necessary to manage expectations as well as the resume submittal process. VMS's, like nextSource's TAMS, provide the structure, efficiency and communication needed to eliminate the inefficiencies that plague the traditional procurement process.

What makes TAMS so useful is its straightforward framework. It provides separate modules (e.g. Sourcing, Procurement, Accounting and Reporting) which connect content with data. TAMS also provides staffing agencies, hiring managers, payroll and accounting with their own respective, customizable views of the entire process. While providing this insight to so many different people, TAMS still allows the daily workflow to be managed centrally through a designated onsite manager or by the corporation.

TAMS is also a great way to keep track of time on a project. For example, when the TAMS administrator approves a submittal from an agency, an e-mail is sent to the hiring manager, alerting him/her that new talent has been submitted whose profile is available for viewing. After reviewing, the hiring manager can either request an interview or decline the candidate. If the candidate is declined, the manager is prompted to provide comments to the submitting agency to improve the quality of matching for future submittals. If the hiring manager requests an interview with the candidate, TAMS will generate an email informing the agency of the manager's availability for a telephone or in-person interview.

To make things even better, by using TAMS you can augment an organization's pool of qualified candidates by extending their reach to multiple agencies. When additional agencies are added to the preferred vendor list, TAMS integrates them seamlessly by consolidating billable hours and fees across all external staffing agencies providing a single invoice to the customer.

When looking to acquire additional staffing, intelligence is key. Knowing what jobs are paying in which locations can give any business the inside information they need to put together enticing offers without going over-budget. The People Ticker gives an edge to anyone looking to acquire the best talent at competitive rates.

How much does an accountant with 3 years of experience make in Chicago? This information can be found quickly and easily with a single search. In fact, The People Ticker can have it scroll by in real time, with numbers that take the current economy into consideration. This devise was created by compiling valuable input from many trusted sources and it then presenting the data in an understandable and convenient way. It is an accurate and efficient method of figuring out a benchmark salary.

Every business knows that determining a pay rate should be carefully considered in order to get the most qualified workers at the most affordable costs. Yet many companies do not have the time and resources available to do the necessary research. Why rely on buying outdated survey results for salary insight? The People Ticker can shed light on this process and give businesses the knowledge needed to set the right price for the market.