Are you hiring with the right JD? Take Assessment
Catena is now Pearl Talent! Same mission, new name.
As a business owner, you’re probably looking to scale your business in some capacity, whether it’s developing new product lines or entering international markets, but if your company's growth is outpacing your HR team’s ability to hire new people, a staffing agency may be the missing piece of the equation in your growth strategy.
In today’s competitive market, your HR team may be inundated with applicants, but none of the applicants seem to have the right skill-set or years of experience for the roles you’re looking to fill. The right staffing partner can get your HR team above water by cutting hiring time from months to weeks by handling the vetting and interview processes, and delivering candidates who are motivated to contribute to your company’s success and growth.
With thousands of staffing agencies worldwide, selecting the right partner can feel daunting. What kind of candidates do they have access to? Do they offer offshore and nearshore support? How can they ensure who they place will be a right cultural fit? Can they provide advice for how to encourage productivity out of new hires?
The best staffing agency provides access to motivated, skilled professionals who support your business’s growth goals. On the other hand, the wrong partner can lead to wasted time and money.
To help with your decision, we've curated a list of the 11 best staffing agencies in 2025. These agencies offer diverse specializations and service models to align with your business and hiring needs.
Think of a staffing agency as the right hand of your HR department— they’ve gotten to know hundreds of qualified candidates before you even post a new job. They also handle lengthy interview processes, scheduling, and can even manage meticulous compliance matters during the hiring process.
The best hiring agency can provide you with high-quality candidates before you even know you need them and ensures these new hires continue to thrive long-after the hiring process is over. They are invested in your business’s long-term success and allow you to allocate more resources to innovative growth strategies, such as new technologies or enhanced sales support.
As remote work continues to be the norm for many companies and a preference for many workers, remote staffing agencies specialize in connecting businesses with professionals who work remotely or offshore. A remote staffing agency can give your business an additional edge by diversifying your candidate pool to qualified remote employees who may be better suited for roles that you’ve been struggling to fill with local applicants.
Additionally, a remote staffing agency can facilitate alignment between local and foreign workforces by coordinating communication and project management. Lastly, a remote staffing agency can take a major burden off your HR and legal departments by handling the complexities of international hiring, including managing visas, sponsorship, local employment laws, and tax laws. This in turn can save your company thousands if you plan to hire international talent.
Here is the list of 11 of the best staffing agencies that bring a variety of specializations, industries served, and recruitment services:
Let’s start with us—Pearl Talent! We were born out of the frustration of time wasted during recruitment—slow hiring processes and poor quality candidates. So, we built a high-touch, white-glove talent strategy that ensures businesses have access to exceptional professionals from around the world, including product engineers who have worked at major tech companies, to creative marketers who have launched global campaigns, or fast-paced thinkers who have worked for emerging startups.
We place talented candidates from our exclusive talent pool at companies within the U.S and E.U., and offer offshore services for companies in need, not only guaranteeing high-quality workers, but ensuring your domestic and abroad teams work together seamlessly. Our flexible, month-to-month pricing model starts at $3,000/month, ideal for rapidly scaling companies needing compliance matters handled efficiently.
Industries Served: Agencies, E-Commerce, Executive Coaching, Healthcare, Legal, Private Equity, Real Estate, Startups, Venture Capital
Workana is Latin America's largest freelance and remote work platform, connecting over 600,000 entrepreneurs and companies with talented and qualified professionals. They specialize in sourcing developers and freelancers for specialized and seasonal projects, allowing businesses to select candidates based on established portfolios and profiles. Workana offers three service levels: Free, Max ($299/year), and Enterprise, catering to various business sizes and needs.
Industries Served: IT, Design, Writing, Marketing, Admin Support, Legal, Finance, Engineering
Arc is a remote staffing agency that simplifies remote hiring by connecting employers with established developers worldwide. Their talent pool includes ex-Googlers and PhDs from regions like Latin America, EMEA, and APAC. Arc thoroughly assesses skills, English fluency, and remote readiness of global talent, allowing companies to save up to 58% versus traditional hiring methods. They also leveraged AI to cut back on time-consuming resume reading and vetting. Freelance rates range from $15–$110+ per hour; full-time hires incur a 20% annual salary fee.
Industries Served: Technology, Finance, Healthcare, E-Commerce
Virtual Latinos is a remote staffing agency connecting North American businesses with remote professionals from Latin America, specializing in placing virtual assistants. They manage the entire recruitment process, from sourcing to onboarding, allowing businesses to focus on core operations. Hourly rates range from $10–$18+, depending on experience.
Industries Served: Admin Support, Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR
Korn Ferry is an established organizational consulting firm, which focuses on strategy, operations, and talent acquisition for their clients. They emphasize leadership development and professional growth, ensuring hires drive organizational success. Korn Ferry stands out as a trusted partner for companies looking to strengthen their leadership pipeline by offering tailored professional development strategies on top of traditional staffing agency support. Korn Ferry primarily operates on a placement fee model, charging 30–35% of the candidate's first-year salary, with retainer options available.
Industries Served: Consumer Markets, Financial Services, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Industrial, Technology,
Toptal connects businesses with a curated network of freelance professionals, including software engineers, designers, finance experts. Of the thousands of applications Toptal sees each month, typically fewer than 3% are accepted. This selective yet flexible approach allows Toptal to match businesses with freelancers who can meet their specific project needs. They offer a flat monthly subscription fee of $79 that is charged if you decide to proceed with a talent search, allowing cancellation at any time.
Industries Served: Technology, Financial Services, Healthcare, Consumer Products and Services, Communications, Media and Entertainment, Industrials.
Hire With Near, often just called Near, is a full-service employment agency linking U.S. mid-market businesses and startups with dedicated professionals in Latin America. With over 35,000 pre-vetted, English-speaking candidates, they fill roles across various departments within 21 days, significantly cutting back on hiring time. Near charges a monthly fee per hire, varying based on the role, with no upfront costs unless a hire is made.
Industries Served: Finance and Accounting, Customer Support, Virtual Assistants, Sales, Marketing, Product, Design, Data, Engineering
Goodwin Recruiting is a full-service recruiting agency for executive, financial, industrial, healthcare, and hospitality industries. They focus on building successful relationships with candidates, ensuring each placement aligns with your company's goals. They look beyond skills and resumes to get to know everyone as people and professionals. Their proven track record has generated faster hires and a more cost-effective talent search. Goodwin provides contingency and retained search options, with fees varying based on specific company needs.
Industries Served: Executive Search, Hospitality, Financial Services, Healthcare, Industrial, Information Technology, Professional Services, Senior Living, Government, Education, Insurance, Retail, Construction, Marketing, Sales
Andela is a global talent acquisition firm that uses AI-driven matching technology to connect companies with remote technology professionals from over 135 countries, focusing on emerging markets like Africa and Latin America. They offer individual contractors, or can quickly form a team on your behalf and take full accountability for project completion, with project delivery as much as 33% faster. Andela charges a flat monthly rate between $6,000–$14,000 for developers, depending on experience and role complexity.
Industries Served: Application Development, AI, Data Engineering, Cloud, DevOps, Product Management, UX/UI Design
Somewhere is a remote staffing agency that specializes in helping businesses hire top overseas talent at significantly reduced costs. They source professionals from regions like the Philippines, Latin America, South Africa, Eastern Europe, and South Asia. With a network of over 600,000 vetted candidates, they charge a one-time fee equal to 25–35% of the candidate’s first-year salary, depending on the number of roles filled.
Industries served: Technology, Finance, Marketing, Operations, Creative
Sparks Group is a full-service staffing and recruiting firm with over 50 years of experience connecting businesses with top-tier talent across various industries. They offer flexible hiring solutions, including contract, contract-to-hire, and direct hire placements, tailored to meet the specific needs of employers. Their comprehensive approach encompasses candidate sourcing, vetting, and onboarding, ensuring a seamless hiring process. Pricing is customized based on factors such as hire type, role complexity, and industry sector.
Industries Served: Information Technology, Accounting and Finance, Creative and Marketing, Office and Administrative Support
When choosing a staffing agency, you want to make sure the people they attract to join their talent pool aligns with your company culture and the successful staff members you already have in place. If your goal is to bring on a staffing agency as a long-term solution for your HR department, you should make sure their overall service model is sustainable in keeping their talent pipeline fresh and updated. When selecting a staffing agency, you’ll want to consider the following qualities:
You want to find a staffing agency with recruiting expertise in your specific industry, and that has a history of successful placements in similar roles you are looking for. For instance, a staffing agency who mainly places temporary tech developers may not be the best fit if you are looking to fill a permanent, customer service specialist role. Consider whether a specialized agency better aligns with your needs than a generalist agency.
Industry specific agencies often identify higher-quality candidates with skill sets best suited for niche industries, but may limit your access to certain geographic regions you may be looking to hire from. Think about your businesses main priority in onboarding a staffing agency: Is it cutting back on hiring costs? Finding permanent hires faster? Or maybe just looking for overall hiring strategy advice? An agency with the right experience and expertise should be able to provide you with all of these things.
Be sure to research the agency’s reputation online and lookout for customer testimonials to gather feedback from both clients and candidates. You want to find an agency with a track record of not only successful placements, but a positive user experience for candidates and proven ROI for companies. High retention rates often indicate that an agency is doing their due diligence with vetting candidates and ensuring they not only bring the right skill set, but are a great cultural fit.
In today’s age of technology and artificial intelligence, the agency you choose to partner with should utilize technology to enhance their recruiting process to improve candidate sourcing and cut back on hiring time. You should have the confidence that your staffing partner is able to evolve with the often volatile job market, and bring forth high quality candidates regardless of the current economic climate.
You should evaluate the agency’s recruitment pipeline to ensure it has a systemic and sustainable approach for sourcing, vetting and placing candidates. You want to ensure they conduct thorough background checks and skill testing, and don’t just accept anyone into their talent pool.
Along with reputation, you should be able to establish clear communication and receive timely updates on the hiring process from whichever staffing agency you use. You want dedicated personnel from the agency who are specifically assigned to your company, and provide you with regular updates via email or monthly meetings. If they’re not upfront with you about fees or how they source their candidates, this may be a red flag and lead to wasted money on bad hires and the wrong staffing partner.
A staffing agency provides you with the opportunity to get ahead of your competition by catering to your hiring needs and allowing you to focus your time elsewhere—whether it’s reallocating hiring budgets to support DEI initiatives or leveraging new technology—the best staffing agency can focus on high-ROI recruitment channels while you focus on your ten year growth plan.
Depending on your current staffing needs, a staffing agency can reduce hiring expenses by providing access to freelance and contract employees, potentially reducing the need for permanent hires should your current business goals not demand them. But, they do much more than just outsource your recruitment efforts and save you money—they free up your internal team’s time so they can focus on better managing their staff members or rolling out new projects. Time is just as valuable as money in today’s business world, and in allowing your teams to focus their attention on other core competencies aside from hiring, it may increase your profits in the long run.
The best staffing agencies provide you with access to an exclusive talent pool of both permanent and temporary workers that your competitors may not have access to. If you're looking for tech stack experts, marketing gurus, executive leadership, or offshore technical support, the right staffing partner can provide you with the highest quality candidates for whatever specialized skills you are looking for.
A major benefit of using an employment agency is the ability to adapt your recruitment efforts based on the businesses needs. Say it’s the beginning of the year and you have a new budget to hire twenty new staff members, but you don’t have the time to read through hundreds of applications. The top employment agencies can adjust hiring efforts to meet your seasonal demands, and also scale back when your hiring needs are satisfied.
As noted throughout this article, hiring and recruitment can be a major burden for internal teams—we hear it from our partners as a major pain point they had before bringing us on. A staffing agency can streamline the hiring process by pre-screening candidates, conducting interviews, and managing paperwork and onboarding. This can expedite the hiring process and save your business valuable time, and allow your new hires to make a more immediate impact.
Beyond rigorous vetting, your employment agency should provide ongoing support through regular check-ins to ensure the candidates they’ve placed are succeeding. One bad hire can cost a company thousands in wasted salary, the opportunity cost of projects delayed, and can dampen team morale. When your staffing agency focuses on quality matches while filling roles quickly, a project can be expedited and your internal teams can celebrate their successes.
Pearl is a strong choice as a quality assurance partner, as we provide post-match support, including bootcamps, alignment calls, and continuous coaching, ensuring your hires are thriving and delivering long-term results.
Most importantly, the staffing agency you choose should align candidates with your company's current and future needs. A long-term approach to talent acquisition can help your business reach new markets and customers by bringing in skilled global professionals who have the potential and experience to help you thrive and grow for years to come.
The staffing partner you choose today will either accelerate your growth trajectory or become the reason for your missed targets. The wrong partner can drain resources and growth momentum, while the right partner amplifies your organizational capacity and accelerates execution.
At Pearl Talent, we operate as an integrated staffing solution, combining onshore and offshore talent acquisition with post-placement support. Our methodology focuses on sustainable team integration rather than transactional hiring. We track client growth metrics as primary success indicators, ensuring our placements contribute to your strategic objectives.
Our approach to sourcing candidates includes a thorough talent assessment, cultural fit analysis and skill development recommendations. This framework supports organizations across sectors, from emerging companies to established enterprises.
Explore our exclusive talent pool today to find the perfect fit for your business.