How do you onboard a contractor?

Before they arrive, arrange for orientation paperwork such as the I-9, W-4, or W-9. You may also want an employee handbook for contract workers, along with any benefits information. Also, set up team introductions, share the company vision, and then begin with specific training on the tasks that are needed.

What is contractor onboarding?

This is the process for temporary employees, contract workers, and freelancers to get acclimated to your company, culture, and priorities. It should cover the tasks they will be working on in addition to access to software, compensation paperwork, and other considerations to help them do their job well.

Is onboarding important for staffing and contract employees?

Onboarding helps improve employee retention . Gallup cites SHRM, the society for human resource management, on the statistic that employee turnover can be as much as 50% in the first 18 months. It’s important for your contract employees to get a glimpse of your culture and priorities so they can be productive while working for your company.

Are staffing agencies worth it?

Staffing agencies are all different. They can specialize in certain placements, such as tech or medical or general office. They can focus on direct placements or short-term projects or some combination of both. They have the potential to save you time and money during the hiring process. It all depends on the agency you use, their past history of success, and if they attract the type of contractors you need.

What are the benefits of staffing agencies?

Staffing agencies provide short-term and seasonal work to lessen the burden of employing full-time workers who may only be needed for a few short months. Staffing agencies also mitigate the risk of making a bad hire, and gives you greater access to talent, allowing you to fill positions faster.

What are the cons of staffing agencies?

When you use a staffing agency, the incoming contract worker may not fit your company culture, and very often, no one has spoken to the candidate before they appear for work. Companies often do not know the full work background of a staffing employee. And because of the short-term nature of staffing, the training may be incomplete.

What questions should I ask when choosing a staffing agency?

Ask about their experience, interview-to-hire ratio, their certifications and their onboarding process. Ask for any referrals or case studies from other clients to judge the staffing agency.

How can you review the staffing agency’s record with previous clients?

If you ask the agency, they will refer you to testimonials on their website—which they have already curated—or put you in touch with a previous client that they know had a fantastic result. This can be helpful, but you may also want to contact those past clients directly. Sites like Glassdoor, TrustRadius, or other review sites, like Best Staffing Agencies , may also help.

Find the Best Design & Creative Staffing Agency

There are more than 20,000 staffing agencies in the United States. We've developed a free ranking algorithm to grade staffing agencies on a wide set of factors. You'll find the very best Design & Creative staffing agency to help you, and reduce your risk of an unsuccessful hire.

Man Working at Desk with Computer and Color Wheel

The Top 11 Design & Creative Staffing Agencies in 2024

During an average workweek in the United States, more than three million people go to work as temporary hires or contract workers according to the American Staffing Association.

And many of those firms specialize in only creative and design talent. In fact, the eight largest creative firms generate almost a billion dollars in revenue.

What does that mean for you? You are not alone in seeking temporary, project-based creative talent.

Using a staffing agency specializing in creative talent helps you solve several problems at once: You can tap into a pool of qualified applicants, vetted and interviewed by accomplished other creative professionals and recruiters.

Review firms below to find the best fit for your project and unlock new sources of talent to push your design projects even further.

Here's our selection of the top Design & Creative staffing agencies:

1. Toptal

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Toptal boasts a wide array of the industry’s elite tech and business talent, but it is unlike many other staffing agencies. Most of their talent work remotely from across the world. Initially conceived as freelance marketplace, Toptal has evolved as a preferred staffing destination for leading Fortune 500 companies to bring in the very best. Toptal began with only tech experts, but, over the years, they expanded their network to include finance experts, designers, and more. Companies are paired with a talent matcher who then finds the best talent for that company, working on hourly, part-time, or full-time contracts.

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YEAR OF FOUNDATION:

2010

CEO:

Taso Du Val

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Served Regions:

Global

2. Robert Half

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Robert Half offers businesses a full spectrum of specialized staffing and consulting solutions. They also help candidates find career opportunities where they can fit and thrive.
The company is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (symbol: RHI) and is a member of the S&P 500 index. It has been recognized nationally for its work.

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YEAR OF FOUNDATION:

1948

CEO:

Harold Messmer Jr

Areas of specialities:

General

Served Regions:

Global

3. Adecco

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Adecco is one of the world’s largest human resource and staffing firms. Adecco connects thousands of professionals with some of the top global employers. Adecco has more than 50 years of experience in staffing and recruitment. Adecco services talent requirements across accounting, marketing, hospitality, customer service, retail, administrative, manufacturing, and other fields.

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YEAR OF FOUNDATION:

1996

CEO:

Alain Dehaze

Areas of specialities:

General

Served Regions:

Global

4. Express Employment Professionals

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Express Employment Professionals is a privately held internationally franchised company with hundreds of franchised locations all over the world. They help companies and candidates find good fits for their staffing and career needs. The firm offers a full range of employment solutions including temporary staffing, evaluation hire, professional search, and human resources for businesses across borders. The team at Express helps its clients meet a wide range of positions including industrial, administrative, professional, and more.

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YEAR OF FOUNDATION:

1983

CEO:

Robert A. Funk

Areas of specialities:

General

Served Regions:

Global

5. Manpower

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With years of experience and a global presence, Manpower is enriching people's lives with meaningful employment and development opportunities. To ensure they serve their clients and candidates in the best way possible, the company has aligned itself with partners that both enhance and expand their offerings, including ones for recent graduates and veterans.

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YEAR OF FOUNDATION:

1948

CEO:

Jonas Prising

Areas of specialities:

General

Served Regions:

Global

6. Aerotek

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Aerotek began as an engineering staffing solution for aerospace and defense industries. These roots are what gave the company its name. Aerotek is ranked as one of the largest staffing firms in the U.S. for engineering and clinical/scientific industries. Staffing Industry Analysts has named Aerotek as one of the largest staffing firms for accounting and financing.

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YEAR OF FOUNDATION:

1983

CEO:

Todd M. Mohr

Areas of specialities:

General

Served Regions:

Global

7. Insight Global

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Insight Global is a premier provider of employment and staffing solutions to several Fortune 1000 customers across the United States and Canada. They provide long-term contracts, short-term contracts, temporary-to-permanent, direct placement, and enhanced staffing services.
Insight Global specializes in placing contract job seekers into information technology, accounting and finance, engineering (non-IT), and government jobs. Since their inception in 2001, they have experienced growth within their industry, rapidly expanding from an Atlanta-based start-up to one of the most successful staffing firms in America.

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YEAR OF FOUNDATION:

2001

CEO:

Bert Bean

Areas of specialities:

General

Served Regions:

Global

8. AppleOne Employment Services

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Part of the ActOne Family of Companies, AppleOne Employment Services has serviced the Federal Government including direct with FEMA. Recently, they formed a new corporation ActOne Government Solutions Inc. to specifically serve the Federal government contracts. AppleOne’s CEO, Janice Bryant Howroyd, was a White House appointee selected by former President Barack Obama.

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YEAR OF FOUNDATION:

1964

CEO:

Janice Bryant Howroyd

Areas of specialities:

General

Served Regions:

U.S.-only

9. Aquent

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Aquent is known for assisting some of the world’s largest, most innovative brands and is a team ready to tackle any challenge with speed and determination. They work diligently to understand your specific goals and to help you hire permanent, temp to perm, freelance, embedded, or outsourced help that delivers breakthrough customer experience.
By aligning their account services team by industry, Aquent delivers quick, effective solutions by identifying the talent who will already understand your exact needs. Their network of high-quality, innovating talent covers dozens of digital marketing roles, including UX, digital marketing, and more.

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YEAR OF FOUNDATION:

1986

CEO:

John Chuang

Areas of specialities:

Design & Creative, Human Resources, Marketing

Served Regions:

Global

10. Mondo

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With nearly two decades of experience and offices nationwide, Mondo helps candidates find full-time, freelance, or contractual work with some of the best organizations. They have a high fulfillment rate and a fast fill time. They help solve the most challenging talent gaps at midsize to enterprise-level companies, along with recently VC-funded startups facing mass hiring challenges and organizations facing hiring needs.

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YEAR OF FOUNDATION:

2000

CEO:

Tim Johnson

Areas of specialities:

Design & Creative, Marketing

Served Regions:

U.S.-only

11. Randstad

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Randstad has earned a reputation for combining innovative HR technology with human insight to power solutions like on-site management, RPO, and outplacement services. They take a personal approach to technology consulting and deliver solutions for the projects and challenges your IT organization is facing.
Randstad provides independent studies of employers and employees and gathers objective workforce data to help you understand the workforce and propel your business.

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YEAR OF FOUNDATION:

1960

CEO:

Jacques van den Broek

Areas of specialities:

General

Served Regions:

Global

Design Staffing Guide

Employers in need of creative design talent may be dealing with inefficient software, less-than-ideal marketing managers, lackluster user experience design, and other staffing issues.

Many employers also do not have the time to search for top job candidates, conduct interviews, or be assured that the talent they seek will excel in certain positions or office culture.

To speed up the hiring process plus guarantee a highly qualified candidate perfect for an open position, staffing agencies for design talent may be the solution for a business or organization.

What Is a Creative Design Staffing Agency And What Does It Do?

A creative design staffing agency helps employers staff creative roles, including short- and long-term staffers, individual freelancers, or entire teams.

The agency connects employer clients with national, regional, and local networks as well as top candidates best-matched to a specific role based on the employer's needs and hiring criteria. An agency can also provide employee screening, recruitment, and onboarding services for clients.

Design staffing agencies are proficient in identifying an employer's needs and connecting the employer to highly talented creative job applicants who will excel in a role or team. An agency will ask about the specifics of a business or organization, how it operates, the types of employees most likely to thrive there, and a timetable for providing the best-matched candidate.

Specifically, a creative design staffing agency's work for employers includes the following:

Searching for and identifying top talent and marketing an open position to potential hires.
Evaluating several candidates' skills and their potential to fit within an employer's team or corporate culture
Using professional evaluation tools for job candidates, including personality assessments, resume reviews, reference checks, and skills testing
Conducting phone, video, or in-person interviews with top candidates
Delivering to employers the most highly qualified candidates for further consideration
Managing payroll, benefits, and continuing candidate evaluation to save employers time and money

Ideally, an employer will work long-term with a design staffing agency, not just through the hiring process.

What Does A Creative Recruiter Do?

Similar to a staffing agency, a creative recruiter can work with a specific employer or assist multiple employers in finding top job candidates. A recruiter might also work directly with creative job seekers and direct them to creative design staffing agencies.

Creative recruiters can also be the first step between an employer and a job seeker by conducting a preliminary interview before recruiters refer a job applicant to the employer.

Roles to Hire For With Creative Design Staffing Agencies

Creative design staff agencies help employers hire for the following positions and more:

Art directors
Brand managers
Communications specialists
Content developers
Creative directors
Digital designers
Digital marketing managers
Graphic designers
Illustrators
Interactive designers
Marketing managers
Product managers
UI/UX designers
Video editors
Video producers
Visual designers
Web designers
Web editors

Always check with a staffing agency for the specific positions for which it hires.

What Creative Jobs Are In Demand?

In-demand creative jobs include designers, PR specialists, creative strategists, developers, and marketers. The best-paying creative jobs in 2020 include UX designers, creative directors, and mobile designers.

The Creative Group's 2020 Salary Guide reported that the most high-demand, competitive positions include virtual reality designers, content designers, content strategists, front end web developers, machine learning analysts, marketing analytics managers, search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) specialists, UX/UI designers, and more.

How Employers Pay Creative Staffing Agencies

Employers, not job candidates, pay a design staffing agency for its services.

Generally, an employer will pay the agency a recruitment or placement fee, and agencies usually receive payments from multiple employers or organizations, often referred to as a client or client company by the staffing agency.

A percentage of the candidate's first-year salary wages often is the base on which a staffing agency's bills an employer.

Agencies can be paid in at least three ways:

An employer pays an agency only until a candidate is placed in the open position.
An employer pays the agency upfront before the agency begins work on filling a role or identifying a candidate. The benefit to the employer is that the agency will be searching full-time for top talent since the employer has already paid the agency.
An employer can pay half of the fee upfront before a staffing agency begins a candidate search. The agency receives the rest of the fee after a candidate fills a position.

How an employer pays the agency depends on that staffing agency's operations or preferences, how employers prefer to deal with staffing agencies or the type of candidate search involved.

As An Employer, Should I Hire and Use a Creative Staffing Agency?

Hiring a creative staffing agency can reduce the time and effort needed to find high-quality candidates. Other benefits include the following:

Agencies can connect employers to highly qualified talent networks. These networks often include top talent with excellent credentials and extensive experience. What's more, an agency's database can lead employers to top candidates who are not currently applying to job postings but still seek to move to another company or organization, commonly known as passive candidates. A passive candidate generally has a long-term connection to the agency and its network.

Creative staffing agencies do background checks for employers so that candidates are fully vetted and highly qualified. Staffing agencies can perform candidate interviews, check references, review work history, and evaluate a candidate's personality and skills.

Employers save time and resources by circumventing a long hiring process. An employer can avoid lengthy candidate searches, resume reviews, and interviews of numerous applicants who may not be the best fit for a position.

Working closely with a design staffing agency will likely ensure that the agency's experience in securing the right candidate aligns with an employer's talent needs and criteria.

With a fully-vetted and top candidate secured through a staffing agency, employers can be sure that the new hire is fully capable of immediately excelling in the role, regardless of the onboarding or training requirements.

What Is the Best Creative Staffing Agency To Work With?

Toptal draws the most talented and experienced from around the world to work on your design projects. Each design applicant must undergo a thorough screening process, and Toptal only accepts the top 3 percent of all applicants. Toptal is especially a great resource for fields that cross design and technology, such as UX/UI and web designers.

Mondo has described itself as the largest staffing agency in the United States specializing in tech and digital marketing. With a GlassDoor rating of 4.3 out of 5, Mondo has won over 127 awards and has offices in New York City, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and more. It hires for creative design and production, eCommerce, marketing automation, content and social marketing, UX/UI designers, web analytics, and more.

Artisan Talent is a creative staffing agency specializing in digital, marketing, and artistic talent. With a GlassDoor rating of 4.6 out of 5, it received the Best of Staffing Client Satisfaction in 2019. Additionally, it has been cited by Time Out New York (as one of the best staffing agencies in New York City), Forbes (as one of the best staffing agencies nationwide), and Entrepreneur Magazine (as the best company of 2019).

Tips For Choosing A Creative Staffing Agency

Find out how long the staffing agency has been in business. An older agency will likely have more accomplishments and greater trust with its clients.
Find out exactly the types of positions for which a staffing agency hires. While the kinds of positions filled do overlap with different agencies, always inquire with an agency directly about the jobs they fill.
Discover where the agency is located and which areas it serves. For example, is the agency national, regional, or local? If an agency is national, where does it have offices?
Ask how many clients the agency has, and how extensive its candidate network is.
Inquire about the agency's fees and how it pays clients.
Ask if an agency will handle a candidate's payroll, benefits, taxes, and other requirements for an employer.
Check if an agency has received any awards or been cited in major publications. These markers can distinguish a higher-quality agency from its competitors, though highly awarded and frequently mentioned agencies may require higher fees.

See below to search Design & Creative staffing agencies in a specific city