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FAQ

Questions we hear.

Longer answers than the landing-page version. If yours isn't here, write to us through the hire form — same address.

Are you a staffing agency?

No. Staffing agencies place a body and then disappear. We do something smaller and more specific: we vet a candidate against a vertical rubric, introduce them to one employer who needs that exact work, and stay involved until both sides agree the work is good.

We take a percentage of the engagement value, not a markup on hours. That means we get paid when the engagement works, not when it starts.

Who is Stratum for?

Credentialed professionals whose degrees and licenses don't transfer cleanly into the US labor market — nurses, physicians, allied-health workers, architects, engineers, scientists, software engineers, teachers, finance analysts, and skilled trades.

On the employer side, firms who already work with contract talent and care more about the drawing set, the protocol, or the pull request than about which country issued a license.

How does the vetting work?

Every vertical has its own rubric, written by a practitioner in that vertical. Architects send drawings, BIM files, and a short response to a design brief. Scientists send protocols, raw data, and a written methods section. Software engineers send code, repos, and shipped projects. We grade everything against the rubric before any employer sees a name.

The rubric is the product. If the rubric is wrong, the introductions are wrong, the engagements fail, and we go out of business. So we spend a lot of time on the rubric.

Do I need US work authorization?

For now, yes. Most placements today are W-2 or 1099 engagements inside the United States, which requires work authorization. We are watching remote-contracting structures carefully and will expand the geographic footprint as the legal picture allows.

What does it cost a candidate?

Nothing to apply. Nothing while you're being vetted. Nothing while you're working. The employer pays Stratum a placement fee. You receive your full agreed rate from the employer.

What does it cost an employer?

A percentage of the engagement value, billed against the work that gets accepted. We don't charge for shortlists, interviews, or sourcing. You pay only when the person we introduced is on payroll and producing work you've accepted.

How long does the application take?

About fifteen minutes if you have your CV and a few representative work samples handy. We respond within five business days. If we accept you, the rubric review takes another week or two depending on the vertical and the depth of the portfolio.

What about Tier 2 and Tier 3?

Tier 2 is supervised work. Architecture under a US-licensed firm, scribing for foreign-trained MDs, paralegal work for foreign-trained lawyers. Same rubric, same vetting, with the supervision and liability plumbing handled. We're standing it up through 2026.

Tier 3 underwrites the cost of re-credentialing — NCLEX prep, USMLE study materials, credential evaluation — against future earnings. We can only fund Tier 3 if Tier 1 generates the revenue, so we're sequencing it that way.

Where are you based?

Boston. Most of the team is here. Our employer pipeline is national; our candidate pool is global. We don't plan to scatter for the sake of optics.

Where do these numbers come from?

Every quantitative claim on this site is sourced. The list below is the canonical registry — citation marks elsewhere on the page point to entries here.

  1. Batalova, J. & Fix, M.. Leaving Money on the Table: Brain Waste among College-Educated Immigrants. Migration Policy Institute, 2024. https://migrationpolicy.org/research/brain-waste-college-educated-immigrants
  2. Batalova, J. & Fix, M.. Untapped Talent: The Costs of Brain Waste among Highly Skilled Immigrants in the United States. Migration Policy Institute, 2024. https://migrationpolicy.org/research/untapped-talent-costs-brain-waste-among-highly-skilled-immigrants-united-states
  3. Aging Societies Rely on Immigrant Health-Care Workers, Posing Challenges for Origin Countries. Migration Policy Institute, 2024. https://migrationpolicy.org/article/health-care-worker-migration-trends
  4. Foreign-Born STEM Workers in the United States. American Immigration Council, 2024. https://americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/foreign-born-stem-workers-united-states
  5. Occupational Outlook Handbook: Registered Nurses. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/registered-nurses.htm
  6. Barriers to Career Advancement Among Skilled Immigrants in the US. Ballard Brief, BYU, 2024. https://ballardbrief.byu.edu/issue-briefs/barriers-to-career-advancement-among-skilled-immigrants-in-the-us
  7. America's Missing Bilingual Teachers. The Century Foundation, 2024. https://tcf.org/content/commentary/americas-missing-bilingual-teachers/
  8. The STEM Labor Force: Scientists, Engineers, and Skilled Technical Workers. National Science Foundation (NCSES), 2024. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20245/foreign-born-stem-workers