If you are contingent workforce buyer using VMS/MSP, you probably have a solid grasp of what capacity of your staffing firm suppliers is occupied by your VMS/MSP orders.

For comparison purposes, we decided to poll a random sample of staffing firms with annual revenue of less than $250 million, asking them: “Roughly what percent of your firm’s orders/hiring reqs come through VMS/MSP versus other direct traditional paths?” This is what we found.

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The findings from our poll can be summarized as follows:

• Nearly 30 percent of the sampled firms reported that none of their orders were coming from VMS/MSP
• 37 percent of sampled firms reported that up to 30 percent of their orders were coming from VMS/MSP
• 28 percent of firms reported that more than 30 percent and up to 90 percent of their orders were coming from VMS/MSP.
• 6 percent of firms reported that more than 90 percent of their orders were coming from VMS/MSP.

None of the firms reporting that more than 90 percent of their orders come from VMS/MSP had annual revenue of less than $25 million. However, 55 percent of firms across the categories that had at least some business through VMS/MSP, up to 90 percent of orders, were smaller companies with less than $25 million in annual revenue. Meanwhile, among the firms reporting none of their orders/reqs were coming from VMS/MSP, 81 percent posted annual revenue of less than $25 million, and none of the rest had annual revenue of more than $50 million.

We also asked if any of the staffing firms that were receiving any VMS/MSP orders/reqs (up to 90 percent) had deployed a specialized talent acquisition/recruiting process (optimized for these types of orders/reqs). Twenty percent reported that they had. And this behavior appeared to be independent of revenue size of firm. (As might be expected, firms with over 90 percent of orders coming from VMS/MSP basically have one process for those orders.)

How do these findings stack up to your experience with your staffing firm suppliers? What percent of your suppliers’ capacity is occupied by VMS/MSP orders/reqs? What percent of your suppliers have specialized talent acquisition/recruitment processes that are optimized to VMS/MSP orders? Let us know in the comments below.