Quality of High-Tech Consultants Needs Upgrading

PHILADELPHIA—September 20, 2005—Hiring managers nationwide believe the quality of their permanent staffs to be significantly higher than the quality of their consulting staffs, according to the results of a survey released today by Yoh, a leading provider of talent and outsourcing services and a Day & Zimmermann company.

The survey asked 499 hiring managers selected at random from outside Yoh's customer base to grade the quality of their permanent and contract staffs on a five letter scale, from "A" for "excellent" to "F" for "failure". Only 17 percent of employers surveyed gave their contract staff an "excellent" rating, the highest available. Nearly twice that number—33 percent—of respondents rated their permanent staff as "excellent".

Overall, 60 percent of respondents rated their consultants as above average, grading them with an "A" or a "B", compared to 81 percent of permanent workers ranked above average by employers.

The complete survey data, which is broken down geographically across 43 states and 16 industries, is available to reporters on demand as an Excel spreadsheet. The study's methodology is also documented and available to reporters.

Respondents from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, for example, rated permanent talent higher than respondents in other industries, with 43 percent of permanent staffs in pharma and biotech rated as "excellent," and 19 percent of consulting staffs rated "excellent." In addition, 86 percent of respondents in pharma and biotech rated permanent staffs as above average with a score of "A" or "B," while 67 percent offered the same rating to consulting staffs.

"Consulting talent is not a commodity, and shouldn't be treated as such by employers or staffing firms," says Jim Lanzalotto, Vice President of Strategy and Marketing for Yoh, which places both contract and direct employees. "The absence of best hiring practices for contract talent by both parties has led to this perception that consultants are not of the same quality as their permanent counterparts. Companies that best understand their business needs and can effectively communicate those requirements to a staffing partner will find the quality of their consultants increases dramatically over time, and ultimately can meet or exceed the quality of their permanent staff."

Yoh believes hiring managers are rating full-time staff significantly higher than contract staff for a number of reasons, including:

• Not using a specialized partner to find contract talent and a weak level of effort put into hiring and managing contract staff
• Poor integration of contract and full-time staff
• Contract workers are often kept on payroll through responsibility changes, when often they aren't qualified to take on different positions or tasks

Unlike general temporary staffing agencies, Yoh focuses on providing employers with high-impact technology and professional talent and outsourcing services, using rigorous, proprietary best hiring practices. Yoh's customizable, extensive mix of services includes needs assessment, requisition management, networking, recruitment, interviewing, program management, and onboarding.

Front line executives echo the findings of the Yoh survey. "We're always looking for experienced and skilled consulting talent to complement our full time staff," said Sue Baker, Vice President of Research and Development at Vertex Inc., the leading provider of tax technology solutions. "But it's very challenging, time-consuming and costly to find high-impact, talented people with all the right qualifications in the technology market. Those people are out there – you just need the right process and partner to help you find them."

The rapidly growing life sciences industry values high-quality temporary talent as well. "Hiring the most qualified contract staff is crucial to an early stage life sciences company's growth," says Brenda Gavin, Partner at Quaker BioVentures, a $280 million life sciences venture capital fund. "The development of biopharmaceuticals, medical devices, and healthcare technology relies heavily on the highly trained and knowledgeable professionals brought in to get the job done. But young and emerging companies often don't have the resources to seek them out, resulting in less than optimal results if you don't understand what the company needs and don't have the right partner to find the right people for the job."

With over 65 years of recruitment experience, Yoh helps more than 1000 companies annually to consistently attract and retain the highest quality contract and direct employees.