Find out which recruiters are most trusted...

[masonryan]

Hi Ben,

There are people on this forum who have a vested interest in the status quo and will seek to trash anyone who wants to make the agencies and agents more accountable or work better for the contractor. Ignore those people.

[cojak]

Hi Ben,

There are people on this forum who have a vested interest in the status quo and will seek to trash anyone who wants to make the agencies and agents more accountable or work better for the contractor. Ignore those people.

But don't ignore the fact that you received no interest in it from contractors and couldn't see a way to make money out of it...

[malvolio]

Hi Ben,

There are people on this forum who have a vested interest in the status quo and will seek to trash anyone who wants to make the agencies and agents more accountable or work better for the contractor. Ignore those people.

Nonsense. It's nothing to do with preserving the status quo, it's more to do with understanding reality. You still haven't grasped that agencies don't work for contractors and never will, and their business, as far as contractors are concerned, has nothing to do with recruitment.

The only way to change the relationship between agencies and contractors is to change the financial model of their business - which is worth around £27bn a year apparently, so has a degree of inertia. Tinkering with the route into that market is basically doomed to be ineffective. You really need to create a parallel and equally cost-effective market, or get the law changed so that we recruit and pay for the agency. Good luck with both.

[jmo21]

What do you think of their idea?

<snip>

"Contractors.. Never miss an opportunity"

Im not sure I get that, but it's nice to see a competitor in the space.

<snip>

Thanks for your interest, we're getting on well, Im working on some other projects at the moment, and Secretstatus is ticking along as a useful tool for our small user-base, not making any money, currently.

I don't think I would try to make a product for contractors again, as they are extremely resourceful and don't seem to want to engage in a cookie cut fashion. Preferring to negotiate their own deals.

Ironic, you don't get their idea, we don't get yours.

I admire you trying, and them trying too. I just don't see the market for either.

AND you think it is the contractors fault for not wanting to engage.

[evilagent]

Hi Ben,

There are people on this forum who have a vested interest in the status quo and will seek to trash anyone who wants to make the agencies and agents more accountable or work better for the contractor. Ignore those people.

The business model drivers are the end-clients.

Agencies cannot dictate any terms to a client the client does not agree with.

When clients seek to outsource their recruiting,
they define the day-rate (mostly),
the skills required,
the start date, and the right to change it on a whim,
the end date, even telling contractors they're not needed on day one,
the early termination model,
even whether they pay their invoices.

If you remove agencies from the picture, you will have the same issues only in-house.

You won't get paid any more, as the savings from using agencies will be absorbed by the client as a cost reduction, not given to you as a bonus.

[craig1]

The business model drivers are the end-clients.

Agencies cannot dictate any terms to a client the client does not agree with.

When clients seek to outsource their recruiting,
they define the day-rate (mostly),
the skills required,
the start date, and the right to change it on a whim,
the end date, even telling contractors they're not needed on day one,
the early termination model,
even whether they pay their invoices.

If you remove agencies from the picture, you will have the same issues only in-house.

You won't get paid any more, as the savings from using agencies will be absorbed by the client as a cost reduction, not given to you as a bonus.

You're right there but there's also one other thing to consider that makes it all about the end-client. The end-client will know that in all bar the most niche of markets there are far more agencies in the decent to excellent agent bracket market than there is work available and even more in the lower quality brackets of agency. It's a client driven market, if agents annoy clients even slightly then it's easy to drop them off the PSL. Conversely, poorer agencies only have margin to play with, more and more of them are being tied into fixed-margin deals that can only end up in tears for the agency and their suppliers at some point down the line. Even some very good agencies are finding more clients are tying them down to fixed-margin deals and they're having to spend a lot of time justifying margins above 10%.

Contractors are even further down this path, if you have no relationship with an agency then you're an outright commodity that is easily replaceable, even if you think you're the best in the world at what you do, they'll just replace you with someone that can do the job to 80 or 90% and probably still have the same chance of securing the work. I know some agencies that won't work with me again because I'm more trouble than the low margin is worth to them, they know I'm going to bat hard for not opting out and weekly bill with 7 day terms. They'd rather just go for a contractor who might not have all my experience but will be a good little revenue source who doesn't complain. That suits me as the market is now, it hasn't meant me being out of work.

I do a fair bit of my work direct with end-clients and I typically work on splitting the likely agent's cut with the client, they get a "discount" for having to do AP and contract work with a single contractor, I get a bonus for having the contacts to get the work without an agent. If we're not sure what the agent's cut would be I usually propose 15%. It's far harder doing work this way than people realise, corporate AP teams will push payment terms to the absolute maximum possible and if you go to some of the really big players then you're treated in the same way as any other small business and given 45 to 90 day payment terms and forced "discounting" of invoices for the privilege of doing work with them. Making friends with the AP team is always a high priority for me! As a rule of thumb, if you're the type of contractor who gets their accountant to do everything for them then contracting direct is unlikely to be a satisfying experience as you will have to get your hands dirty in the financial management of your company.

[DirtyDog]

Thought I'd resurrect his post.

Found a competitor w ww.theplacetofind.com/

One of the owners was shilling it to an agent on LinkedIn and it reminded me of this thread and wondered if it was the same site

Wonder how the OP is getting on?

I've just had a linked in mail from someone who I don't know, and am not connected to telling me "We’re now using The Place to manage our preferred contractors. As you’re one of them, we’d like you to join. It’s a place where you get up to the second alerts on new contracts, a place that allows us to see your availability in real time. Bringing you and us together in seamless communication."

Go into the details of the person sending the inMail and he just happens to be a co-founder of The Place.

[benjiman]

Ironic, you don't get their idea, we don't get yours.

I admire you trying, and them trying too. I just don't see the market for either.

AND you think it is the contractors fault for not wanting to engage.

Thanks, haha noone's "fault". I'm simply sharing a startup lesson learned; Recruiting cannot easily be reduced to a 'digital exchange' in the short-term. Especially when one-side of the market owns the exchange lol!

But realistically, the reason that we're not seeing options to mark ourselves as available in Linkedin (how many times have you seen someone put "available" in their "job title") is because it goes against their revenue model...

They rely on confusion, as they get 70% of their income from prospecting mails such as those shared here. "InMail" is how recruiters pay to punch through the privacy walls. If they added the simple fields we need they'd see a big drop in the need for prospecting.

You can hardly blame us for trying to create better engagement models, but I've learned it's a thankless task!

[benjiman]

How do you guys feel about my new product <mod snip>

It's pulls coder peer-reviews in from various sites and lets people search for people who might be appropriate for their jobs.

*Prepares for the hate*

[SueEllen]

How do you guys feel about my new product <mod snip>

It's pulls coder peer-reviews in from various sites and lets people search for people who might be appropriate for their jobs.

*Prepares for the hate*

If you want to hire a code monkey then the site is useful.

If you want someone with communication skills so they are able to find out what the end-users actually want and can communicate with other people to overcome issues then the site isn't any use.