New to Spherion^® or to using the staffing industry as a partner? Below are some frequently asked questions you may find helpful in understanding who we are and what we do.

Q. Who is Spherion?
A. Spherion is in the business of helping small to mid-size businesses get their work done. And we have been for 60 years. We provide highly qualified employees to fill temporary needs, and we recruit and hire exceptional full-time office professional and light industrial talent, as well as accounting, legal, technology, sales and marketing professionals.

Think of us as your neighborhood workforce team, dedicated to understanding your business and your unique employment challenges. Discover why we’re the recruitment and staffing experts small and mid-size businesses turn to for customized, highly responsive workplace support. 

Q. Does Spherion provide both temporary and full-time talent?
A. Yes, we provide candidates for direct hire, flexible (temporary) assignments and temp-to-hire arrangements, where an organization can gain first-hand experience with a candidate before offering a full-time position.
 
Q. How does Spherion recruit quality talent?
A. Spherion’s sourcing process begins with a market and job analysis that is used to develop company-specific outreach strategies. These strategies include community outreach focusing on where potential candidates live, learn, work and play. Our online outreach programs, including our heavily visited job site at Spherion.com, have access to over 25 million resumes. And, finally, there’s our most critical source of potential employees, our referral programs. Referrals come from our national name awareness and from our many employees and clients. Our systems provide each office with a universal database of clients. Additionally, we have over 130 virtual recruiters that are immediately available to our local network of offices for emergency or fast ramp-up requirements.

Q. How does Spherion match the right talent with the right job opportunity?
A. Using its proprietary Great Starts^SM selection process, Spherion tests hard and soft skills to ensure the right match. Based on your specific job requirements, we are able to choose from more than 700 hard-skill assessments. Our soft skill assessments are also job-specific, and look for soft skills necessary to succeed in various work disciplines. All of our assessments are validated and EEOC compliant. Once we have a clear understanding of a candidate’s skills and behavioral characteristics, our certified recruiters conduct a behavioral interview. Based on the successful outcome of the interview, we then conduct employment verifications.

Q. How does Spherion retain quality, flexible (temporary) employees?
A. Last year, Spherion employed almost 375,000 employees and we take our job as their career agent very seriously. Spherion offers a wide variety of retention and career enrichment programs that include:

• Training ― E-learning and video training opportunities, with over 400 options available, as well as certification programs for course completion
• Employee Resource Center ― A centralized, 24/7 portal that is content rich with information that supports their current job, career, lifestyle and finances 
• Competitive Benefit Suite ― Medical, dental and life insurance plans are available, in addition to an employee stock purchase plan and multiple payment options
• Paycard ― A debit card that allows our employees to withdraw cash from any ATM machine, purchase items or even make phone calls
• Employee Feedback ― Formal surveys, as well as informal contacts with employees on an ongoing basis measure employee satisfaction and determine areas for improvement

Q. Why should a company consider supplementing a full-time workforce with flexible (temporary) employees for peak workloads instead of using overtime pay hours?
A. After a full day’s work, full-time employees are generally less efficient and therefore less productive. It has also been our experience that employees tend to raise their salary expectations after receiving overtime pay during peak periods.

Q. How does Spherion help get flexible (temporary) employees up to speed prior to placing them on the job?
A. Spherion has a special program, under which we provide free orientation on flexible (temporary) assignments that meet certain criteria - two hours on a one-week assignment and four hours on a two-week or longer assignment. The on-boarding of our associates begins with our Great Starts Orientation packet, which includes tips for success and provides them workplace and safety policies. This packet also includes placement briefs where they can document the specific requirements of the assignment and also gives them an outline of critical information they will want to ask their work supervisor the first day of their assignment. As the relationship with Spherion becomes more of an ongoing partnership, training effectiveness increases. 

Q. How does Spherion charge for its flexible staffing services?
A. Spherion’s fee for service is included within a customer’s hourly bill rate. The difference between Spherion’s bill rate and the pay rate to the employee is our cost of doing business.

Q. When using flexible (temporary) employees through Spherion, who is responsible for paying employee taxes, holiday pay, etc.?
A. Spherion is the employer. That makes us responsible for a flexible employee’s hourly wage, as well as social security taxes [FICA], state and federal unemployment taxes and workers compensation. Spherion is also responsible for employee benefits, such as healthcare coverage, vacation, holiday and sick pay, as applicable.
 
Q. How does Spherion ensure quality recruitment and matching of candidates for direct (full-time) hire?
A. In our 60 years of business in staffing and recruiting, we have developed unique tools and techniques for identifying qualified talent for our customer’s job requirements. Just as with our on-assignment employees, candidates provided for direct (full-time) hire go through Spherion’s in-depth employee selection process, behavioral interviewing, cognitive assessment and reference checking. We actively recruit candidates year-round through extensive local networking, as well as job fairs, advertising, online searches so that we have the best possible pool of available talent from which to draw.   

Q. How does Spherion charge for its recruitment of candidates for direct (full-time) hire?
A. The advantage of Spherion’s contingent recruitment services is that a client pays a placement fee only when a Spherion candidate is hired. There is no cost to see our two to three best candidates and compare them with what you are seeing through your other sources with no obligation.

Want to know more about us or have an immediate staffing need? Contact us today.