Help Needed - New Recruitment Service

**Mad pistachio nut** · 11 November 2004, 23:49

Sorry to tell you this but you are wasting your time and money. This old idea has always ended in failure and although a good idea, like world peace, just doesnt work in practice. Your site is very "homemade" and has a cheesy American sales script asking the reader that if they say yes to any of your loaded questions then they need your services. Umm, a salesman you are not. Advertising you site aint gonna sell it either, you dont want anyone to see it in its current form, its awful! Anyway, as I said, sorry for not pulling any punches but although I dont know you, I dont like to see anyone waste money and energy. Although right now you still think this is a great new idea ( oldest idea tried many times ) and surely every logical person in the world would want to bypass the agent and contract direct with the client saving lots of money, the way of the world conspires against you. Awful fact but very true. Take a few paces back and look with fresh eyes, be more critical of the idea and ask why nobody is paying you lots of money yet? E-cruitment is lot further ahead than you with billions of investment and bigger budgets. You have missed the ferry.

**king contractor** · 12 November 2004, 11:11

Oh Dear...

Very poor, cheesy website. I wouldn't want to pay you nearly £300 for a professional service when you can't even get your website looking professional.

As mpn rightly points out this has been tried several times only to end in failure. I hope you haven't invested too much time and money...

**Viking** · 12 November 2004, 11:46

Re: Thanks for your responses.

Thanks for your responses, much appreciated, please keep them coming.

I am concerned however that I am not getting the correct message across. I would appreciate it if you could tell me what it is you think we are trying to do, what do you think our service is?

We know from very extensive research done over the past 18 months that no-one is providing this service to the end client/corporate. There are some Indian companies out there providing outsourcing solutions to Agencies, and one agency is trying to add value to this outsourcing model by selling a similar service but using Indian staff rather than technology. And there are many web sites out there providing CV search and selection (iProfile being one of them and they were so proud of their 50% accuracy they actually advertised the fact ! ).

I agree in whole about the "cheesiness" of the site, but we are selling to the HR recruiter/hiring manager, take a look at some of the agency web sites, at least ours does work and I think that says a lot about our professionalism.

I am also pleased to see you think the site will appeal to our US cousins as this is one of our target markets. The US corporates are way ahead of Europe when it comes to direct on-line recruitment which our service is designed to integrate with. However, I would welcome any comments on how to make the site more UK friendly. Any examples of sites which you think encompass the UK style would be appreciated.

**Heinzbenes** · 12 November 2004, 14:42

Recruiting

The main problem is laziness.

At the moment HR staff can do one of 3 things
a) Place ad on jobserve, paper etc. They then have to go through all the applicants as you say to find one who matches the buzzwords. This takes a long time, time that can be better spent filing their nails.

b) Get the technical managers to do the hiring and they have to do the above.

c) Get spec off of tech manager, fax to agent, who does all of the above and send back 3 CV's (if these are their instrauctions)

They have to pay agents commission which can be negotiated to approx 10%-15%, but so what, its not their money is it.

Another top bonus of using agencies are the free lunches, presents and in some time cash bribes.

Now they can use your service, where they have to do the work again.

**oaksoft** · 13 November 2004, 01:26

Well I'm struggling to understand this

I concur with the other comments about your website but my own is hardly state of the art

.

The problem is that your business presumably lives or dies on the quality of the website.

Here are some typical questions you will need to answer from clients:-

1)Where do you get your candidates from?
2)What is your advertising budget and what is the extent of it as regards finding candidates?
3)How many candidates do you currently have on board?
4)How many are in IT, embedded, management etc?
5)Which places do you advertise in?
6)How many staff do you employ?
7)What is your conmpany's turnover?
8) Where do you have offices?
9)What experience do you have of recruitment?
10)Where are you getting CV's from which are not already finding their way onto other established job boards?
11)Why should I get contractors in directly and then have to deal with 20-30 suppliers invoice and contract negotiations rather than just a single agency invoice?
12)Why would I pay a new business almost £300 when the same thing with Jobserve is £20 for a weeks advertising? I'd only need to advertise for a week anyway because candidates will assume the role has gone after that time or they'll assume the role is terrible.
13)What is the benefit to my company in using you? Saying that I can get contractors direct is more of a benefit to the contractor and not me given my question 11). In other words, what problem do I have which this service solves without introducing other bigger problems in its place?

If you can answer all of the above then you have just scratched the surface at a solution which will sell.
Your website gives no indication that your company understands the recruitment problems faced by clients.
It requires clients to find you and do the work.
It offers no insight into why clients use agencies in the first place.
It appears to be drafted from a contractors perspective and if that is true it is doomed to failure.

My own service through OakSoft Recruitment offers clients everything a typical recruitment agency offers but we offer a range of technical interviewing services and we charge a damned sight less than most other agencies. Despite this we can still experience problems getting clients to buy into it.
I understand why this is the case but the key to that understanding comes from knowing how the client's world revolves and not approaching it from a contractor's perspective.

Here are some client-based questions. Your answers to these would be insightful:-

1)When do clients typically recruit new staff?
2)Under what types of circumstances would a client choose an expensive contractor over a permy?
3)Why do clients sometimes use IBM consultants who charge £1000 per day for graduates?
4)Why do clients use recruitment companies like ARM and HaysIT?
5)If you urgently needed a contractor tomorrow and wanted to interview 4 candidates by the end of the day, how would you go about this?
6)What is the typical urgency of contract placements when requested by a client?
7)What will a typical agency charge in fees?
8) Why do clients allow them to charge these fees?
9)Why do most big clients NOT want direct contractor placements?
10)Why do some clients insist that contractors who contact them directly go through one of their PSL agencies?
11)Why do clients use preferred supplier list agencies?
12)And finally........how does your service answer all of the above without introducing new problems for the client?

I'd be interested in your answers because this is just a snippet of what a client of any size will expect you to answer.

**Stoked1** · 15 November 2004, 00:18

Re: Well I'm struggling to understand this

that site sucks big time!

**Viking** · 15 November 2004, 10:49

Re: Well I'm struggling to understand this

Having reviewed your comments, I am now convinced my site gives the impression we are an agency or that we are trying to implement an new agency model. This could not be further from the truth.

I have spent the last couple of years on this board discussing ways in which contractors and clients can work together without the need of an agency. In all cases, the solutions offered were to replace the agency model with a new model which was based on the agency model and therefore required some sort of compensation to be made either to a third party or the contractor who provided the work.

When I broke up the agency model into a process model it became clear to me that in order for clients to break the dependancy on agencies, there would have to be an equivalent to Methadone. When analysed in its basic form the process by which a contractor (or permie) is employed through an agency is based on the ability of an agency to maintain and hold work seeker information (aka CVs). In the past it was too expensive for clients to advertise for positions in the press and to maintain databases of candidate CVs. So the recruitment agency was born and these agencies were able to use economies of scale to advertise for positions and to collect and store (and sell) CVs.

With the advent of the Internet (which is the ultimate match-making tool, look at eBay), this historical function performed by the agencies is now irrelevant, as an advert can be placed on a job board and within an hour 100 CVs will arrive in your Inbox. Unfortunately, this has in itself caused issues when clients try to recruit directly:

1. it has been established that an HR recruiter can spend upwards of 60% of their time on non-core activites when recruiting.
2. statistics have shown that up to 78% of CVs received in response to a job advert on the web are totally irrelevant for the position advertised.

These problems and the realisation of the costs associated when recruiting direct are the main reasons why recruiters return to traditional methods after dipping their toes in the water.

The common misconception that companies do not like contractors going direct is just that, a misconception. You only have to spend a day on this board and you can have many discussions about contractors going direct. Additionally, it is assumed that companies do not like processing the paperwork when dealing with dozens of contractors. Again, this is a fallacy as every invoice has to be verified against each timesheet and then split out against different cost centres and projects. As explained below, companies use PSLs for different reasons, having a single invoicing point is a bonus, not the "raison d'etre". If agencies are replaced by companies like us and more and more contractors go direct and more and more permies are recruited on-line, then all a client has to do to acheive the same benefit of a single invoicing point, is to instruct an umbrella and advise all direct contractors that they have to use said umbrella. This would benefit contractors also, as the client could negotiate better rates and the contractors could probably get most of their invoices paid within 48 hours. Although seasoned contractors would probably be happy to wait the 60 days in return for getting a better rate than that being offered by the agencies.

The main reason that companies use PSLs is because they are fed up to the back teeth of dozens of agencies phoning them every ten minutes asking if they have any work available, also they have worked out that all the agencies use the Internet to advertise for positions and therefore they are all the same so it makes no difference which agency is used. All an agency has to do to get on a PSL is offer a rate below those who are already on it. However, a PSL is by definition a restriction of trade and the agencies will use this to their advantage (it should never be assumed that agencies are not business savvy), so they will demand in the contract that they get a cut for everyone who comes into the company. Most companies will accept this as being reasonable because they are not required to pay anything, rather it is the other agencies and contractors who will be required to pay the levy.

Finally, I am still confused as to why it is assumed that the client has to do any more work with our site than with an agency. To quote Heinzbenes, the process using an agency is as follows:

"Get spec off of tech manager, fax to agent, who does all of the above and send back 3 CV's (if these are their instrauctions)"

With us:

1. Tech manager fills in on-line job posting form
2. We collect all CVs, screen, rank and provide back a list of CVs using the same look and feel as an internet search engine, with the best suited CVs at the top, also the same way a search engine works.
3. Client looks at top 3.

Please tell me where the difference is, oh yeah, we are 80-90% cheaper than an agency (depending on length of contract). And, let me assure everyone here, as an ex. PM, if I could have saved 10-20% on my most expensive project cost (ie: staff), I would have jumped at the chance.

It should also be noted that given that recent research has shown that the actual cost benefit of going offshore is only 19%, then surely it is in everyones interest to consider more cost effective alternatives.

**Stoked1** · 15 November 2004, 21:29

Re: Well I'm struggling to understand this

The bottom line is your site looks minging and nobody will take you seriously!

**DimPrawn** · 15 November 2004, 22:50

Re: Well I'm struggling to understand this

Wow that's piss poor.

Help Needed - New Recruitment Service