Paying "finders' fees" to agents ?

[mangled]

Hi,

I know the agencies sometimes pay fees to contractors for finding them candidates they later place but does anyone here pay a "finders' fee" to a favoured agent for finding them work ? I'm benched and I was thinking of offering £500 out of first paid invoice to any agent who can get me a role. Is this effective or just money down the drain ? Anyone do this ? Is £500 too much ? Seems it should create a differentiator in the agent's mind as to who to put forward anyway ?

Thanks in advance,

[northernladuk]

Hi,

I know the agencies sometimes pay fees to contractors for finding them candidates they later place but does anyone here pay a "finders' fee" to a favoured agent for finding them work ? I'm benched and I was thinking of offering £500 out of first paid invoice to any agent who can get me a role. Is this effective or just money down the drain ? Anyone do this ? Is £500 too much ? Seems it should create a differentiator in the agent's mind as to who to put forward anyway ?

Thanks in advance,

What?!??! It's their job to find you a role and they already get paid for placing you as part of the cut they earn. They want a contractor in there that can do the job and earn them commission long term. Your £500 quid won't make a jot of difference if you are not the right person and if you are they are gonna get paid anyway so you are throwing your money away...

Pretty useless idea.

[mangled]

What?!??! It's their job to find you a role and they already get paid for placing you as part of the cut they earn. They want a contractor in there that can do the job and earn them commission long term. Your £500 quid won't make a jot of difference if you are not the right person and if you are they are gonna get paid anyway so you are throwing your money away...

Pretty useless idea.

I don't see why it's a useless idea ? The £500 would be an additional cash sum on top of what they would be getting from any other contractor they placed so quite welcome I'd have thought ?

Anyone else have an opinion ?

[TykeMerc]

Hi,

I know the agencies sometimes pay fees to contractors for finding them candidates they later place but does anyone here pay a "finders' fee" to a favoured agent for finding them work ? I'm benched and I was thinking of offering £500 out of first paid invoice to any agent who can get me a role. Is this effective or just money down the drain ? Anyone do this ? Is £500 too much ? Seems it should create a differentiator in the agent's mind as to who to put forward anyway ?

Thanks in advance,

If memory serves (and it may not) it's actually illegal for an agency to charge a candidate a fee.

There are some companies that do charge fees, but I suspect they dance a very fine line around that legislation and frankly why the hell would anyone with a brain use that service? Oh.....

[WTFH]

Don't do it.


If you do it once, they'll want more the next time, or they'll turn round and offer you a lower daily rate and take a bigger cut.


...and it's their job to find you a role.


You're better to look on job boards, phone round friends doing the same line of work as you, phone round past clients and phone round agents. Make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date.

[WTFH]

Oh, and one thing to be careful of - if you have seriously pee'd off a client and an agency in the recent past, don't be too surprised if said agency doesn't put you top of their list when it comes to suggesting candidates, and you may find that the client (if asked by others) may not be too complimentary about you.


I mean, perhaps you decided to hold on to equipment because they weren't happy with the quality of your work, or something like that...


http://forums.contractoruk.com/accou...me-client.html

[cojak]

If memory serves (and it may not) it's actually illegal for an agency to charge a candidate a fee.

There are some companies that do charge fees, but I suspect they dance a very fine line around that legislation and frankly why the hell would anyone with a brain use that service? Oh.....

TM is quite right, it is illegal for agencies to charge (there are exceptions but IT isn't one of them).

The fine is a piffling £400, but they'd have a criminal charge on their books and that doesn't do their reputation a lot of good.

[NotAllThere]

...s and that doesn't do their reputation a lot of good.

[cojak]

Well, I did think about that, but they must have a reputation amongst their clients that they care about.

[northernladuk]

The other posters are correct when they mention about paying to find work. You think you might be able to get around this by calling it an 'incentive' to pick you over someone else so you aren't paying them as such but then they (and you) could potentially fall foul of bribery laws.

You might not but it's a very grey area. Still something you'd be better off avoiding and something I very much doubt they would touch.