8 Questions to Ask Before Hiring an IT Staffing Agency
Every IT staffing agency promises top talent. The real difference shows up when you ask direct questions about how they find and evaluate candidates, confirm they’re real, and stay accountable after the hire. The answers separate a true talent partner from a resume-forwarding service.
Top Stack founders Mike Masiello and Alexa Scalzi weigh in. Both built their careers at large national firms before launching Top Stack to give Greater Philadelphia employers a more personal, relationship-driven hiring partner.
How do you source tech candidates?
The best IT staffing agencies source mostly from an established network of passive candidates, professionals who aren’t job hunting but are open to the right move, rather than waiting on job board applicants. Because those candidates are already known and pre-qualified, outreach starts the day a search opens, which shortens time-to-hire.
“We don’t start from zero. Our tech recruiters specialize by discipline — cloud, cybersecurity, data, and beyond — and spend their days building real relationships with people in those communities,” explains Mike Masiello, Top Stack CEO and a staffing industry leader with over 20 years of experience.
“That means when a search opens, we’re reaching out to people we already know and trust.”
Having established relationships within the talent pool becomes especially important when hiring for highly competitive roles, as well as contract-based work which often requires a quick turnaround and a highly-skilled consultant who will ramp up fast.
“We’re often redeploying consultants who have proven themselves on other engagements. This type of talent is exactly why our clients work with us. They want access to top candidates before they go back on the market and get hired by a competitor.”
How do you verify a candidate is actually who they say they are?
A reliable IT staffing agency verifies identity in two layers: automated screening at the point of application and digital identity verification that cross-checks a candidate’s name, email, and phone against multiple data sources. Each layer catches a different kind of fraud before a candidate ever reaches your hiring manager.
Layer 1: Filter Out Bad Actors
An automated screening tool should be standard at the point of application to stop fraudulent candidates before they enter the pipeline at all.
For example, Top Stack leverages a screening tool for:
- Bot and suspicious activity detection – Behavioral analysis and technical signals flag an average of 8.3% of applicants as bots or non-human activity.
- Known spam IP identification – An average of 18.3% of applications come from flagged sources and are blocked before they’re ever logged.
- Knockout screening – An average of 3.2% of applicants are disqualified instantly for missing fundamental job requirements.
- Geographic mismatch filtering – Applicants outside a required hiring area are held separately for assessment rather than passing straight through.
Layer 2: Digital Identity Verification
If a firm’s only form of identity verification is checking LinkedIn, well, that’s not a valid process.
Top Stack has a digital identity verification process that cross-references a candidate’s name, email, and phone number against data from multiple U.S. online sources evaluating hundreds of data points to assess the consistency, depth, and legitimacy of their digital presence. The result is a scored assessment that tells a recruiter exactly where the red flags are so they can further investigate the candidate.
How do you vet a candidate’s technical skills?
Strong technical vetting starts with understanding the role, not matching resume keywords. A good IT recruiter learns your environment, tools, team, and definition of success, then asks discipline-specific questions that test what a candidate has actually built, run, or fixed. That matters more as AI-generated resumes make keyword matches less reliable.
“There is an art and science to recruiting,” explains Masiello, whose philosophy has been refined over time based on his personal experiences, starting as a desk recruiter and working his way up to regional president, and now as a founder of his own agency.
“The science is the technology. The systems that every agency uses to read a job description and spit out a list of candidates that have a matching resume. But the art, that’s where the true value lies when selecting a partner. It’s in understanding the nuances of both our clients and candidates, and capturing the details that are left off paper but make or break a hire.”
That’s why every Top Stack search begins with an in-depth qualification call with the client’s key stakeholders. We go well beyond the job description to understand:
- The environment: the tools, platforms, and systems the person will work in every day.
- The work itself: whether the role is about building something new, transforming what exists, or keeping critical systems running.
- The team: who the person will work with, who they’ll report to, and how decisions get made.
- What success looks like: what this hire needs to accomplish in their first six months and first year.
- The context: why the role is open, what’s worked before, and what hasn’t.
This type of insight shapes the questions we ask candidates. The result is a shortlist of candidates built around your actual needs.
Your hiring managers spend less time sorting through resumes and more time in meaningful conversations with people who can do the job.
How do you evaluate candidates beyond the tech stack, including culture fit, goals, and work style?
Evaluating fit beyond the tech stack means assessing how a candidate communicates, why they’re really leaving their current role, and how they talk about past setbacks. An experienced recruiter with high emotional intelligence weighs those traits against your specific team, management style, and pace of work, so the person you hire can thrive there, not just pass a technical screen.
“Our team is encouraged to be curious. This goes for both candidates and clients,” explains Alexa Scalzi, Top Stack Chief Revenue Officer who oversees client services and relationship management.
“We believe in asking clarifying questions rather than assuming, and that digging into the past can help make smarter decisions in the future.”
Top Stack’s experienced IT recruiting team is trained to evaluate a candidate’s soft skills, career goals, and work style by:
- Determining role-specific context. The same trait reads differently depending on the role. For example, directness that may be a strength on a small, fast-moving engineering team might be a liability on a team that depends on consensus-building. A recruiter can pick up on someone’s communication style, adaptability, problem solving, time management, and more to judge whether that style fits the specific team they’re hiring for.
- Surfacing unstated motivations. A candidate might say they’re leaving a role “for a new challenge,” but a skilled recruiter picks up on cues: hesitation, what they emphasize or avoid, how they describe their current manager or team. These cues point to the real drivers such as burnout, a bad manager, stalled growth, compensation. Understanding the real “why” matters because it predicts whether a similar dynamic will resurface in the next role.
- Calibrating self-awareness. How a candidate talks about past failures, conflicts with teammates, or feedback they’ve received is often more revealing than how they talk about their successes. A recruiter attuned to this can determine levels of self-awareness and coachability that can correlate to manager-employee relationships, teamwork, and leadership potential.
How do you advise on compensation to keep our company competitive?
A good IT staffing partner gives real-time, market-based guidance on whether your offer is competitive for the role and region. That covers more than base salary: bonuses, equity, relocation, remote flexibility, and benefits. Recruiters will also confirm each candidate’s pay expectations early, so you only interview people your budget can actually land.
“I’m in the market every day, talking to managers and HR teams, so I have first-hand, real-time knowledge on what’s competitive in the Greater Philadelphia region,” says Scalzi.
“I believe in offering genuine guidance. I’d rather tell a client early on that their comp package needs adjusting than let them find out after a candidate says no. It saves everyone time, and it keeps the process honest on both sides.”
Top Stack advises our clients on:
- Salary, Bonus and Incentive Structure. Firms that work a given market regularly see patterns in how comparable companies structure salaries, signing bonuses, annual/performance bonuses, and retention bonuses.
- Equity and Long-Term Incentives. For roles at venture-backed or pre-IPO companies especially, equity (options, RSUs) is often a deciding factor. A firm with visibility across similar-stage companies can help a client understand whether their equity offer is in line with comparable roles, and helps translate equity terms into language candidates can actually evaluate.
- Relocation Packages. For roles drawing candidates from outside the immediate market, relocation support (lump sum vs. full-service move management, temporary housing, timeline flexibility) can be the difference between a candidate accepting or declining.
- Remote/Hybrid Flexibility. This has become a de facto compensation lever; a less competitive salary can sometimes still win a candidate if the flexibility matches what they’re prioritizing. A firm with current market read can tell a client when flexibility is likely to matter more than an extra few thousand dollars in base.
- Benefits Differentiation. Standard benefits (health, 401k match) are often table stakes, but PTO policy, parental leave, professional development/certification budgets, and tuition assistance can meaningfully shift a candidate’s decision when compared against a competing offer.
Compensation conversations get uncomfortable fast when nobody’s being upfront. Scalzi explains how Top Stack recruiters always confirm a candidate’s compensation expectations as a standard part of early-stage screening.
“This means asking directly about current compensation, target range, and any non-negotiables before a candidate is ever presented. Our goal is to filter out mismatches from the get-go. If a candidate’s expectations are meaningfully above budget and there’s no flexibility on either side, that candidate shouldn’t be submitted at all. This protects a client’s time and establishes trust.”
Who will actually run my search, and can I talk to them directly?
Your search should be run by a dedicated account manager who oversees specialized recruiters, and you should be able to talk to both directly. Ask whether the person selling the partnership stays involved after you sign on. Having a consistent point of contact means faster communication, fewer lost details, and a team that learns your culture over time.
When Masiello and Scalzi started Top Stack, they wanted to focus on building real relationships. They left “big staffing” to start their boutique firm in Malvern, PA and escape the transactional nature of large, national firms where a rotating cast of people change search to search.
“Our clients have direct access to their dedicated recruiting cohort. Account managers involve our tech recruiters from the get-go,” explains Scalzi. “They’re the experts, asking smart questions to define the role and build a recruiting strategy that is customized to the role, the manager’s preferences, and the company’s employer brand.”
The key payoff of this type of relationship-building, collaborative effort is continuity. The same people work on all your searches, so there is historical context on your team, your culture, and what’s worked in past hires.
What happens after the offer is signed? Do you stay involved through onboarding?
A strong IT staffing agency stays involved after the offer and during the onboarding period. The scope of their involvement depends on the employment structure. For direct hires, that means check-ins during the notice period to head off counteroffers, plus touchpoints at 30, 60, and 90 days. For contractors, the agency remains the employer of record, managing timesheets, billing, and performance check-ins for the full assignment.
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What happens if the hire doesn’t work out?
A reputable IT staffing agency backs its placements with a written guarantee: a set window during which it will find a replacement or refund part of the fee if a hire doesn’t work out. Before signing, confirm the window, what triggers the guarantee, what’s excluded, and whether refunds are prorated.
- The guarantee window. How long after the start date does the guarantee apply (90 days is typical).
- What triggers the guarantee. Most guarantees have stipulations on the basis of termination. The standard guarantee applies only to employer-initiated terminations as a result of poor performance. Guarantees may be voided by circumstances outside the agency’s control, like company layoffs, role elimination, restructuring. Reasonable exclusions are normal; the key is knowing what they are before a situation arises.
- What the remedy is. A free replacement search is the most common solution, but some agencies may offer a partial fee refund. The replacement search takes into account the issues that caused the termination in the first place, in an effort to find a more aligned candidate.
- Whether the refund is prorated or fully refunded. For firms that offer a refund, a tiered guarantee is common (e.g., X% in the first 30 days, X% in days 31-60, etc.).
“We stand behind our placements. If a hire doesn’t work out, we’ll make it right,” says Scalzi. “More than that, we treat it as a feedback loop. We work to understand what went wrong so we can sharpen how we search next time, for you and for every client after you.”
An agency that treats this as a diagnostic moment, rather than just an obligation to fulfill, is a meaningfully different kind of partner than one that’s just covering a contractual requirement.
What makes an IT staffing agency the right partner?
The right IT staffing agency acts as an extension of your team. It brings you pre-vetted, verified candidates quickly, gives honest guidance on pay and fit, and stays accountable well after the offer is signed. Use these eight questions to find a partner that earns that trust before you share your first open role.
At Top Stack, that’s the standard we set for ourselves. Our recruiters specialize by discipline, know the Greater Philadelphia technology market firsthand, and work alongside the same clients search after search.
Ready to see how we’d answer these questions for your team? Talk to a Top Stack IT recruiter. →