Choosing a staffing agency: criteria you can verify

The employment-mediation permit and its scope

Under Czech Act 435/2004 Sb. on employment, employment mediation is an activity requiring a permit. A permit is issued for particular forms of mediation, so the sentence "we have a permit" is not enough on its own. What matters is whether it covers the form you actually want — typically the temporary assignment of employees to a user.

Agencies holding a permit are listed in a publicly available register, and checking takes minutes: the permit is issued by the Czech Labour Office, and the register of employment agencies is published by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. Check the name and identification number of the entity that will actually sign the contract — it can differ from the trading brand given in the quote.

What to check in the register:

• That the permit exists, and its number
• The forms of mediation the permit covers
• That the permit is valid as at today
• That the entity in the register is the entity on the contract

Insurance, and who the employer will be

An agency assigning its employees to a user must, under the Employment Act, be insured against its own insolvency so that the assigned people’s wage claims are secured. Asking for proof of that insurance and its expiry date before signing is entirely legitimate.

The second question is simple: who will employ the people working at your site. In agency employment it is the agency — it runs payroll, pays contributions and carries the employer’s duties. In direct hire you become the employer and the supplier’s role ends. If the answer to that question comes back ambiguous, that is a finding in itself.

How the supplier establishes comparable conditions

Comparable pay and working conditions for an agency employee against a comparable core employee of the user are a statutory requirement, not a feature of an offer. What is worth asking is therefore not whether a supplier "observes" them but how it establishes them: what data it will need from you, who at your company identifies the comparable employee, and how premiums arising from shift scheduling and overtime are handled.

A supplier who brushes that question aside is moving the risk to you. Compliance with the rules of agency employment is subject to inspection by the Czech labour inspection authorities, on both sides of the relationship.

Questions about the selection method

The difference between suppliers shows most in how they select. For specialist roles it matters whether anyone has actually seen the certificates and understands what they say — that for a welder qualification certificate the tested range decides rather than its mere existence, and that electrotechnical competence is divided according to the activity performed.

Ask also what the supplier will not do, and where its service ends. Someone who can describe the boundaries has usually also described what is inside them. An answer of the "we can handle anything" kind describes no boundary at all.

Questions worth asking about the method itself:

• Who conducts the interview, and what operational experience they have of the occupation
• How the scope and the current validity of professional certificates are verified
• How claimed experience is verified, and what is done with inconsistencies in a CV
• How the shift pattern, the working environment and the place of work are communicated to the candidate
• What happens if, after the start, it turns out the candidate does not meet the requirements

Warning signs

Some signals are reliable precisely because they concern things a supplier does not control. A promised start date is one: it depends on the candidate’s notice period and, for workers from third countries, on an administrative procedure — that is, on third parties. Claims about the size of a supplier’s own database are unverifiable in the same way, and a claim of state endorsement mistakes what the state does: authorities issue permits and maintain registers, they do not issue recommendations of suppliers.

Pressure to sign quickly is a category of its own. A brief that genuinely is urgent can be started on a short but written agreement, so willingness to put the terms on paper is a better indicator than speed of response.

The warning signs in one place:

• A promise of the outcome, or of a specific start date
• Unverifiable claims about the size of the supplier’s own candidate database
• Claims of approval or recommendation by state authorities
• Pressure to sign quickly, and unwillingness to put the terms in writing
• A rate for temporary assignment that plainly will not cover the employee’s statutory entitlements
• The absence of a named contact person answerable for the brief

References, and written terms before the start

References say less than is expected of them. They show that a supplier worked with someone, but not how it will do on your role, in your region and on your shift pattern. It is more useful to ask a reference company specific things: how many people presented actually started, how a situation was handled when someone did not meet the requirements, and how communication went during a disagreement.

Have the terms in writing before a search begins — the scope of the brief, the fee and when it falls due, exclusivity, protection of presented candidates, and the procedure for early termination.