One of the most common goals of a contingent workforce managed service provider (MSP) is to help companies find cost efficiencies and drive savings, usually via a competitive rate card. Although rate cards have a good success rate at driving savings, there is often a whole portion of the contingent workforce where this does not apply – we refer to this population as “pre-identified” workers.
Where competitive sourcing relies on multiple suppliers to submit workers at competitive rates within the rate card guidance, pre-identified individuals often come into the business on already agreed rates without relying on rate card guidance. Thus, they have the propensity to be more expensive and costly for the business. The hiring of a pre-identified candidate usually stems from hiring managers utilizing their network, bringing in someone known to them or others, someone they trust and sometimes under the misconception that this will be cheaper than an agency-sourced candidate. Relying on pre-identified candidates can also have an impact on organizations' diversity, equity and inclusion goals.
