Curasion

Our new framework, The Next Era for Contract Talent, is live today: https://lnkd.in/gQYmNcVp Most companies are running elements of many different recruitment models at the same time. A VMS from a procurement decision made years ago. An agency relationship that predates most of the team. A stack of tools that don't quite talk to each other. Every piece was added for a good reason at the time. The next era is where the idea is to intentionally design your contract talent workforce. Trusted talent ready before the need. Pricing you can see. Knowledge that stays with you. If you or your company engage professional contract talent, this is worth a few minutes of your time.

Our new framework maps all five contract recruitment models since 1995, and lays out six priorities for the era ahead: https://lnkd.in/gazXMpcs Four models have come and gone. A fifth has now arrived. Digitization organized the process. Scale expanded reach. Visibility put talent online. Ecosystems connected the systems. Each one moved the market forward, and each one added complexity to our operating practices. Orchestration is the model now emerging. Talent ready before the need, transparent pricing, and workforce intelligence that compounds with every engagement.

Our new framework, The Next Era for Contract Talent, is live today: https://lnkd.in/eTPCcZzE Since 1995, the way companies hire contract talent has evolved through four distinct eras. Digitization moved recruiting from paper to systems. Scale opened up reach through job boards and vendor programs. Visibility puts most of the professional workforce online. Ecosystems connected internal teams, suppliers and platforms into one broader supply. Each era solved something. Each one also added vendors, platforms, and cost. The fifth era is orchestration. Trusted talent, ready before you need it, pricing you can see, and workforce knowledge that stays with the company. We have invested some time to capture and map what changed at every stage and what the next one asks for.

Traditional staffing runs on markups of 25 to 45 percent. Under statement-of-work arrangements, that number climbs higher. Often to 50 or 60 percent. The client is paying it without seeing the breakdown, and in many cases without knowing it at all. That margin was never about delivering better talent. It paid for opacity, manual sourcing, account management, and the inefficiencies built into the old model. Strip those out and the markup goes with them. Single-digit markups aren't a discount play. They're structural. When both sides can see exactly what's paid and received, there's no wasted effort left to charge for. The pay rate is visible to both sides. The platform fee is fixed. The sourcing fee is published. Same talent. Different math.

Alumni, internal referrals, and silver medalists should be the easiest contract hires a company ever makes. Most companies miss them entirely. There is no system capturing where they went, whether they are available, or whether they would come back. The talent exists. The relationship exists. The access does not. In the traditional model there is no incentive to fix that. Staffing agencies charge the same fee regardless of where the candidate came from. A known referral carries the same markup as someone the agency sourced and vetted itself. That is not an oversight. It is how the model was built. In practice, it means paying 25 to 45 percent on top of the pay rate to hire someone you already know. The next model captures that talent first. Alumni, referrals, and silver medalists flow into a company's own talent pools, alongside curated talent from trusted sourcing partners. When a known candidate gets hired, the sourcing fee is zero. When a partner sources the placement and does the work, the fee reflects that. The incentive structure that built staffing over thirty years stops working the moment the easy hires stop carrying the same fee as the hard ones.

Direct sourcing is growing fast. More than a third of companies want it. Only 11% have made it work. The gap isn't motivation. Everyone in procurement, HR, and talent acquisition wants to hire known talent at lower cost. The gap is knowing how to actually do it. Part of what's driving the appetite is dissatisfaction with the current model. MSP satisfaction scores are near zero overall and significantly negative for companies earlier in their program. More than a quarter of current MSP users are planning to bring their program back in house. The managed model is losing its hold. Most attempts fail for the same reason. Direct sourcing gets launched as a standalone program, separate from the process hiring managers already use. It becomes something extra to think about rather than something that happens naturally. Participation fades and the pools go cold. What moves the needle is making direct sourcing part of the core hiring workflow. Known talent surfaces alongside other options in the same place hiring managers already go. Direct source candidates get prioritized. Referrals get recognized. The program stops being a side project and starts being how hiring works. The companies that crack it are proactive about building pools, integrate direct sourcing into the core hiring process, reward the people who surface known talent, and see the results compound over time.