When you’re going about how to hire the best IT staffing agency, consider these factors. We’ve created a top five list to look for when hiring people to staff your IT department. IT might be the most competitive industry in the history of staffing, so it is imperative to look for these signs from whatever staffing agency or firm you choose to work with.

How to Hire The Best IT Staffing Agency – The Basics

1. Find The Best IT Staffing Agency Meets Your Needs at the Speed of Industry – Your staffing agency must be able to dig into an active pool of candidates who are ready to start within matter of days or weeks, not months. They must be able to communicate to your hiring managers, predict your upcoming staffing needs and be able to scale along side of your projects.

2. Able to ‘Steal’ the Competition – If a candidate is any good, chances are he/she is working. Staffing firms need a certain element of ‘cool’, so that a candidate may feel more comfortable working with one company or another especially if they are looking for jobs “behind enemy lines”.

3. Real Staffing Agencies get Real References – Getting references from a candidate is an art your staffing agency must be able to master. It’s like walking on thin ice and sometimes makes thing awkward if the candidate does not have good work ethics or personality issues. Your staffing agency must have all these procedures and technology in place to save you time and money by doing a background, reference and a personality assessment.

4. They Should at Least be Headquartered in the U.S. – We all know the IT staffing world is dominated by South Asian candidates. Don’t blame us – we have a full staffing team based in India. Most IT staffing companies look to South Asian candidates because they are extremely easy to find and very well educated. However, the best IT staffing agencies should know how to staff in the U.S. as well, and if they aren’t in the U.S. they probably do a very bad job of it.

5. The Best IT Staffing Agencies Stay on the Cutting Edge – We’ve all heard the crazy titles: “Enterprise systems enablement coordination manager”, etc. Your staffing agency can’t just recruit people who have generic titles for generic jobs. There are 1000’s of titles in the IT industry and good staffing firms find recruits that don’t only have generic titles. Your staffing agency should dig beyond front-end or back-end developers or take it a step further by mastering robotics / big-data or cyber-security and healthcare domains.

How to Hire an IT Staffing Agency – Download our Premium Content

For a better picture on how to hire the best IT staffing agency, download our full, ‘Top-10’ guide on How to Hire an IT Staffing Agency. Our guide provides deep insight on what to look for when identifying the best IT professionals out there for your long or short-term goals.