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RecruitAdecco In-Depth Review
Adecco Review Summary
Score 8.5 out of 10
Currency
International
Monthly fees
Not publicly available
Payment options
SWIFT/ACH
Adecco is a leading multinational recruitment and temporary staffing agency specializing in various sectors, including IT, sales, marketing, healthcare, finance, engineering, and hospitality. With thousands of offices worldwide, Adecco facilitates international recruitment for companies.
Businesses can also outsource their entire recruitment process to Adecco, benefiting from dedicated onsite HR staff.
Adecco Company Overview
The Adecco Group is a massive human resources company with an equally large and complex history. This company was founded in 1997 when two leading personnel companies, Swiss-based Adia Interim (founded in 1957) and French-based Ecco (founded in 1964), merged together. This created what is now one of the largest human resources and temporary staffing firms in the world. It currently employs over 25,000 employees, operates in 3,800 locations in 62 countries, and places hundreds of thousands of workers annually.
In the US, Adecco Staffing, USA, a subsidiary of Adecco Group North America, handles the company’s temporary staffing, permanent placement, outsourcing, and career transition services. Headquartered in Pennsylvania, it builds on half a century of HR and staffing experience gained by the Adecco Group all around the world.
Adecco provides temporary staffing and permanent hiring solutions to businesses around the world.
- It can simply provide workers or take on the role of a managed services provider (MSP), which completely manages your temporary staffing.
- With its master vendor program (MVP), it can supply and manage all workers for your local or national staffing needs.
- Adecco also provides training programs and outsourcing for both the business process and recruitment process.
In this review, we’ll look closely at what Adecco has to offer to help you decide if this agency is the best recruiter to partner with.
How Adecco Works
When you’re looking to recruit permanent staff, Adecco offers two different service structures:
- Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO): Ideal for mass recruitment, providing an on-site recruiter who manages your ongoing recruitment process as an extension of your business.
- Dedicated Recruitment Consultant: Work closely with a consultant to hire individuals, with regular communication to quickly source and screen applicants.
Consultation Process
Adecco begins with a consultation to help define the best process based on your hiring needs.
You’ll need to communicate:
- The roles you’re looking to fill
- The number of staff you need
- Responsibilities and requirements for each position
Adecco may also advise on employer branding and diversity, equity, and inclusion to guide your recruitment process.
Sourcing Applicants
- Adecco receives hundreds of thousands of resumes annually, providing a vast talent pool.
- They may also use online job boards and other mediums to attract applicants.
- Recruiters filter applicants based on skills and experience, identifying candidates that match your needs.
Recruitment Process
- In the RPO model, your recruiter will:
- Shortlist candidates
- Conduct interviews
- Select candidates on your behalf
- For individual positions, Adecco will arrange interviews for you.
- After you make your selections, Adecco advises on contracts and salaries and extends job offers.
- Once accepted, Adecco assists with onboarding through its easy online system.
Like most recruitment agencies, Adecco charges a one-time payment for a permanent placement or an ongoing fee for temporary staffing and recruitment process outsourcing. It also offers to replace your worker at no cost if a placement doesn’t work out.
Adecco Key Features
As one of the largest recruitment and temporary staffing agencies in the world, Adecco offers multiple solutions for businesses of all sorts. The key features of its services include:
1. Adecco Professional Sector Focus
While Adecco will recruit workers for any industry as a generalist recruitment provider, it does have some specific experience and expertise in a selection of industries. The areas and positions that it specializes in include:
- Information technology: data analyst, software program manager, developer, data engineer
- Sales and marketing: account executive, sales consultant, merchandise promoter, email marketing specialist, communications specialist
- Services and admin: desk clerk, customer service representative, administrator, executive assistant
- Industrial and manufacturing: electrician, assembler, quality inspector, machine operator
- Logistics and transportation: CDL driver, food delivery driver, logistician, vehicle tester
2. Adecco Temporary Staffing Services
Drawing on decades of experience, Adecco provides both permanent staff placements as well as staffing services for organizations that are looking for only temporary solutions. It brands its temporary staffing solutions as “flexible” staffing, suggesting that they’re ideal for companies that may have seasonal requirements or peak staff needs.
- This service can be very useful for organizations that need to suddenly scale and have to hire very quickly but also with future uncertainty.
- It’s also a good option for companies that want to try out new roles and new people without making a long-term commitment.
Adecco’s temporary staffing solution can be used to simply fill a few positions for a short time. However, you can also have this agency completely manage your temporary staff which is an excellent option for organizations without fully-developed HR departments. It will handle all candidate search and screening, onboarding, training, payroll, and administration for you if needed.
Adecco generally charges a percentage of each worker’s wage on a regular basis. It will invoice you for funds in every pay period and then pay your temporary workers directly, also managing their tax withholding and mandatory benefits contributions (like Affordable Care Act insurance, for example).
Hiring temporary workers can also be a good way to test out both roles and individual employees before hiring them permanently. If you do decide to take them on board later, you’ll need to pay Adecco a conversion fee based on how long the person worked for you temporarily. This fee decreases with longer placements.
3. Adecco Outsourcing
With extensive experience in HR and staffing, Adecco has built up an extensive team of specialists that it can leverage to offer outsourcing services. Businesses can take advantage of HR, BPO, RPO, payroll services, marketing, customer support, logistics, and workforce management outsourcing as they require. Prices for these services are not publicly available and are determined through tailored quotes based on each business’s size and needs.
4. Adecco Training
Adecco also provides upskilling and reskilling training programs to businesses that want to improve the skills of their workforces. These programs are generally provided as online, self-learning training programs ideal for ensuring staff qualifications are up to date and to prepare your workforce for incoming technologies.
5. Adecco Global Reach
Adecco works in 62 countries around the world with its greatest focus in Europe. It has over 3,800 offices staffed by HR and recruitment professionals and has access to millions of job seekers worldwide. If your business wants to find and hire staff in another country, Adecco can connect you with appropriate local candidates. It does not, however, work as an Employer of Record (EOR) that would help you hire internationally by employing staff on your behalf. For this kind of service, you’d need to find an EOR partner, though Adecco may be able to help you hire temporary staff as contractors/freelancers.
6. Adecco Platform
Adecco manages most of its services through its website. Job seekers can visit it to post their resumes and apply for jobs that have been posted on its internal job board. This functionality is all quite simple and straightforward. The Adecco app for Android and iOS devices has also made it more convenient. Through this app, job seekers can search and apply for jobs, schedule interviews, and monitor their hiring process. Once hired, they can also complete onboarding through a self-serve portal.
Unfortunately, Adecco doesn’t yet offer a similar app for employers that would help them manage interviews, approvals, and new hires. Instead, though, this is done through personal communications with their dedicated hiring managers.
7. Adecco Resources
For a large company, Adecco’s list of resources for employers and employees is quite small. The agency only offers a collection of articles with insights and research into the latest hiring trends and recruitment-related news for employers. For job seekers, the website has a blog with useful advice for applying for jobs and interviewing successfully.
Adecco Reviews
The average scores (as of the time of writing) were:
- Adecco G2 = 4.5/5 (4 reviews)
- Adecco Trustpilot = 2.7/5 (67 reviews)
- Adecco Glassdoor = 3.6/5 (11k+ reviews)
Adecco Pricing
Like most of the competition in the recruitment industry, Adecco chooses not to post its prices online. Instead, due to the complexity of pricing permanent and temporary placements, RPO, BPO, and training services, it requires potential clients to contact its sales team for tailored quotes.
However, our research has revealed some pricing information. For temporary positions, we’ve found that Adecco charges an extra 40-45% on top of each employee’s wages for its service fee. This does, however, cover everything, including ACA insurance. These prices are within industry averages.
We don’t know what Adecco charges for permanent placements. However, we’ve found out what it charges for conversion fees if you wish to change a temp into a permanent hire. General clerical and light industrial fees start at $3000 and reduce to $300 after the worker has been hired as a temp for three months. For IT, engineering, technology, medical, and science professionals, the conversion fee starts at $6000 and drops to $500 after four months.
Adecco Pros and Cons
- Pros
Targeted industries
If you work in one of the industries Adecco specializes in, it’s quick and easy to find qualified workers.
Onsite and RPO
Businesses with major hiring needs and those without their own HR departments can outsource recruitment, administration, and payroll to this agency.
Huge global talent pool
Adecco has millions of applicants worldwide to help organizations find the skilled workers they need.
Mobile app for job seekers
While it doesn’t help employers, Adecco’s mobile app helps job seekers find work easily and onboard quickly.
- Cons
No mobile app for employers
While job seekers are serviced, employers don’t get to use an app to manage things like interview schedules and hiring approvals.
No prices online
While pricing can be a challenge, positing at least starting prices online would help potential clients save time and compare Adecco with other service providers.
Adecco Unique Selling Point
Adecco’s unique selling point is the extent of its global reach. This is a huge company that slowly takes over other staffing and recruiting agencies to expand its service area. It currently operates in 62 countries which means that it can help businesses in all of them find local staff or international workers when they need them.
RemotePeople Score for Adecco
8.5/10
Our expert score for Adecco
Our team came to this score by considering the following components in the following weightings:
Talent Acquisition features
25%
RPO features
10%
HR features
10%
Compliance features
10%
Platform features
10%
Pricing
20%
User reviews
15%
For each component, Adecco received the following score:
Talent acquisition features
22/25
RPO features
9/10
HR features
9/10
Compliance features
8/10
Platform features
8/10
Pricing
15/20
User reviews
13/15
Adecco — Our Take
Adecco has decades of experience and a small army of employees working to provide recruitment, staffing, and outsourcing solutions around the world. This agency is a good choice for companies that need to scale fast and don’t have the internal resources to manage mass hiring. Those without fully developed HR departments will also find this provider’s outsourcing services particularly useful. Its personalized service makes it a powerful ally for any company’s recruiting.
To check out some other popular recruitment agencies, check out our guide to the best talent acquisition firms in 2025.
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