Eight questions to ask a staffing agency before you sign

Most employers choose a staffing supplier on two things: the rate, and whether the person on the call seemed capable. Both are weak signals. The rate tells you what a supplier is willing to quote, not what the arrangement will cost you, and everyone is capable on the call.

Here are eight questions that produce answers you can check. We have written them so that a good agency finds them easy and an evasive one finds them awkward — including when you ask us.

1. Are you on the State Labour Inspectorate's list of temporary employment agencies?

If the supplier will employ the workers and send them to work under your direction, it must appear on the list VDI maintains and publishes, and must keep filing a monthly return to stay on it.

A firm that places people into direct employment with you is a different model and the list does not apply — but then it should say so in a sentence, in writing. The full check takes about a minute and is set out in how to check a Lithuanian staffing agency is actually legitimate.

2. Who employs the worker, and who carries which duty?

The answer should be immediate and specific. In the temporary agency model the agency employs and you are the user undertaking, and the obligations split in a way that is well defined rather than negotiable — what a temporary staffing contract actually covers sets out where the line falls.

Hesitation here is the single most reliable warning sign on this list. A supplier who has not thought about it has also not thought about what happens when something goes wrong on your site.

3. What does your rate assume the worker is paid?

Not "what is your rate" — what does it assume the worker gets. A temporary agency worker is entitled to the same pay and conditions as a directly employed person doing that job, and in Lithuania you carry subsidiary liability if the agency fails to pay. A quote that only works below that floor is a liability priced as a discount; we set the arithmetic out in equal treatment from day one.

Ask them to show you the build-up. A supplier confident in its margin will.

4. What happens if someone leaves in week three?

Every supplier has a replacement policy. The useful questions are the specifics: how long to replace, who pays for the replacement's travel and permit, whether you are charged for the period the role sat empty, and whether the guarantee survives the worker resigning as opposed to being dismissed.

Get it in the contract. "We would look after you" is not a term.

5. Who holds the permit relationship, and what happens to it if we part company?

For a sponsored hire this is the question with the longest tail. If the permit was filed on the agency's mediation, what happens to that worker's status if you end the contract with the agency but want to keep the person? Is there a release, a transfer, a fee?

Suppliers differ sharply here, and the difference only becomes visible at exactly the moment it is expensive.

6. What is your monthly reporting to us, and what is in it?

You want arrivals, departures, permit expiry dates and renewal deadlines, as a standing report rather than on request. The permit side especially: a renewal that is noticed three weeks before expiry is a crisis, and the same renewal noticed three months out is an administrative task.

An agency that cannot produce this is not tracking it for itself either.

7. Give me a client who stopped using you, and tell me why

Any supplier can produce a satisfied reference. The informative question is the other one.

What you are testing is not whether they have lost clients — everyone has — but whether they will tell you about it, and whether the account they give matches what the former client says when you ring them. Willingness to answer is most of the signal.

8. Show me your VDI register entry and your company registration

The specific numbers, not the assurance. Both are matters of public record in Lithuania, which means an agency that is slow to hand them over is slow about something that costs it nothing.

While you are there, check for outstanding social-insurance debts. An agency with arrears to the state is an agency whose workers may not be paid next month — and under question 3, that becomes your problem.

A note on asking us

We wrote this knowing it would be used on us, and that is the point. The firms doing this work properly are not damaged by clients who check; the ones that are damaged are the reason the market has the reputation it does.

If you are drawing up a shortlist, send us the requirement and we will answer all eight about ourselves before you ask the others. Our recruitment services page covers the engagement models those answers sit inside.