Staffing Firm Contracts vs. Worxbee Executive Assistants: What Are the Differences?

Have you been wondering about the advantages and disadvantages of your options for hiring a Virtual Executive Assistant?

Many companies look at staffing firms and wonder how we at Worxbee are different. There are some common pitfalls that can go with staffing firms, often embedded in your contract.

Here, we’re outlining the key differences between Worxbee and staffing firms:

To “hire” or not to hire...

Many staffing firms put you under some pressure to hire a temp, full-time or temp-to-permanent Executive Assistant from them. Their business models depend on it. They get paid when someone physically shows up to work, usually making a percentage on top of what the employee makes as their fee. 

Most of the time, you will be under some sort of contractual obligation, for example, perhaps you must hire the Executive Assistant for a minimum of 30 hours per week, whether that’s what you really need or not. It can turn into an expensive exercise for your company and sometimes, you’ll find that the person “hired” may not be who you would have chosen for the job.

Worxbee is different because there is no obligation to hire. All of our virtual Executive Assistants are independent contractors so it’s not about putting someone permanently into a role (although, some of our Executive Assistants are “semi-permanent” in that they’ve worked for a long time for the same client!).

Our Executive Assistants are completely virtual, so there’s no pressure to have someone come into your office for a certain period of time. One of the great things about this is that you save on costs, often quite considerably. Our packages are based on the “active hours” of the virtual Executive Assistant, which means actual, productive time. When you compare that to time in an office, the average full-time employee has been found to work about 60 active hours per month - out of the 160 they’re paid to be there!

Training time

Hiring a temp Executive Assistant is usually expected to be a short-term solution to fill a gap that you have. You often need them to be up-to-speed extraordinarily quickly in order to get the work done in the time that the contract states.

This often means a rush to try to get the Executive Assistant trained and a much shorter learning period than would usually be optimum for the role. The hiring manager often just doesn’t have the time to give to training and as a result, the temp isn’t as thoroughly trained as they should be.

On the other hand, Worxbee’s virtual Executive Assistants don’t need to be rushed through training. You’re paying for their active hours so you can take the time you need. You can also expect that you’ll get someone highly competent who is a quick learner!

Cultural fit

Finding the right cultural fit is hugely important when you’re hiring someone with whom you will work closely. Everyone has their own management style, personality and underlying values. It can be difficult to work with someone who isn’t a great match with those things because there will always be some sort of conflict for them.

When you work with a staffing firm, cultural fit isn’t always a priority. Sometimes, they’re more focused on assessing candidates for their fit to do the tasks involved with the job, but are less concerned with whether they will fit in culturally.

From the candidate perspective, they often don’t find out anything about your company or who the job is for until the very last minute. This restricts their chances of learning more about the business.

Worxbee operates differently. Our virtual Executive Assistants are provided with a client bio to assess their interest in working with our clients. We want to ensure they will be just as passionate about the success of the company as our client. We also do a culture fit interview as part of our recruitment process.

Quantity vs. quality

You’ll find with many staffing firms that you get sent a huge number of resumes to look through in the hopes that one will stick. This almost defeats the purpose of using a staffing firm because it makes more work for you when you have to sort through the pile.

Sometimes it’s not a great experience for you as the client or for their candidates. The firm might collect a huge number of resumes without being meticulous about who is in their pipeline. Candidates can be treated like numbers and are often unhappy with the result.

Worxbee specializes in Executive Assistantservices, which means our candidates have the experience you are looking for. We present two candidates we know will be a great addition to our client’s organization to alleviate being overwhelmed with options. 

Cost

The cost of using a staffing agency varies depending on the salary and the type of contract with the agency. For a permanent role, staffing agencies charge a percentage of the annual salary. These costs may be over the recruitment budget of some micro businesses and small businesses, because most staffing agencies are priced to work with larger corporations. 

Worxbee uses an active hours approach to our monthly retainers - you pay for the hours worked and you are allotted a specific amount of time each month based on your needs. This tends to be a more flexible approach than what you will get with a staffing firm and allows you to pay for the hours you need (beginning with our monthly minimum).

Communication and candidate experience

The overall communication and candidate experience with staffing firms is important to take into account because it impacts the quality of the candidates you might get. A big complaint candidates often have of staffing agencies is their poor or lack of communication with them. For example, they might apply for positions and never hear back, or, they might be contacted by the firm about jobs that don’t fit. 

Sometimes staffing firms are too focused on filling a role in order to make a commission and the experience ends up being poor for the candidate and client. When the experience is poor for the candidate, they create a lack of trust. Loss of trust may put qualified candidates off dealing with them again. 

At Worxbee, we provide a great experience for all of our independent contractors through community, service, and resources. We want to be sure our Executive Assistants are happy so they can focus on providing great service to our clients. It makes a difference in terms of attracting the best virtual Executive Assistant candidates, too!

Final thoughts

Here we’ve outlined our key advantages at Worxbee, as compared to the average staffing firm. We know that cost is often a big reason why clients choose us, but also the quality experience we deliver.

Before you choose to go with any staffing firm, it’s a good idea to find out a few things about them, including their reputation with candidates and how they get paid. It can make a huge difference in terms of your costs and the choices of candidates you get.

Of course, we’d love to help you fulfill your needs for a virtual executive assistant! Virtual Executive Assistants are our specialty, so another advantage of going through Worxbee is that you know you’re going to get strong candidates every time. Schedule a complimentary consultation with us today to see how we can help.