Ask the agent. The Good, the bad and the ugly

[The Agents View]

All,

So over the last few months I've observed, I've stood up for, fought and I've argued with some of you.

Ultimately, contractors and agents come with different agendas, but whether we like it or not, we generally have to work together to make things happen.

I'd like to give you all some insight into the agency world, and perhaps offer some ways around issues which you face every day.

I can't promise I'll give you the answer you want to hear - there are elements to this job which are underhand (or can appear that way anyway) but what I can promise is that I will be as honest as possible - whether it reflects well, or badly on the profession.

So I've started thread as an "ask the agent" exercise.

I don't profess to know everything about this industry - I've been doing this about 8 years now - but even in that time you don't cover everything! I would therefore appreciate answers from other agents in order to combine knowledge.

Who knows, with a little more understanding, we might be able to overcome some of the issues, and I might be able to help you work in better harmony, get more gigs, and lead a more successful contracting life!

Over to you!

Cheers
TAV

[northernladuk]

Who knows, with a little more understanding, we might be able to overcome some of the issues, and I might be able to help you work in better harmony, get more gigs, and lead a more successful contracting life!

Yes yes yes!! and we will start to work hard, respect our permie brothers and strive to deliver what the client wants with no thought for our own situation and rates.

Dam these mushrooms are stong, anyone else want one

I have a question, once a client has picked a candidate from interview and tells the agent to get them on board, how much leverage does that candidate really have when it comes to dictating rates and conditions. Are the agents hands pretty well tied or is it common for an agent to refuse to give a candidate a role due to demands the agent isn't willing to meet? Is there a quick answer to this or is it very much dependant on which client, which agent, what demands?

[malvolio]

Yours is not supposed to be an industry, that's what I do. Anyway, having some experience of your industry myself...

You are supposed to represent me to your client if I am up to the job and have the requisite ability. What you (sorry that's a generic "you", not you personally) actually do is maximise your return on your sales effort by investing as little effort as possible in screening CVs, preferably using keyword searching rather than analysis and not wasting time finding out anything about me that's not on the CV in large bold lettering and preferably double-underlined. The more spoihisitacted of you delegate this task to some poor grad who hasn't got 8 years inthe industry and has no chance of understanding a history like mine, so you only get to see a subset of the potential candidates anyway.

Also your "industry" is driven by bean counters who are commoditising the market and treating us experts (for instance I've got over 30 years in my trade, which makes your 8 look a little paltry) as sales items and not professionals. The net result is that you are not servicing your clients as well as you can in the interests of expediency and sales targets

Discuss...

[The Agents View]

Yes yes yes!! and we will start to work hard, respect our permie brothers and strive to deliver what the client wants with no thought for our own situation and rates.

Dam these mushrooms are stong, anyone else want one

I have a question, once a client has picked a candidate from interview and tells the agent to get them on board, how much leverage does that candidate really have when it comes to dictating rates and conditions. Are the agents hands pretty well tied or is it common for an agent to refuse to give a candidate a role due to demands the agent isn't willing to meet? Is there a quick answer to this or is it very much dependant on which client, which agent, what demands?

So - From my experience, in times gone by it has been more common for an agent to refuse to allow a candidate to go on-site because their margin demands have not been met. In the current climate, it's more about getting what you can, for anyone you can. There are agencies who still demand 25%+ who won't budge, and will turn jobs away if the client won't pay the money, but they are fewer and farther between (I left my previous employer because this was the approach they took).

With regards to leverage, the answer is that it depends. (sorry that's a bit wooly, but see below)

If you are right at the top of the rate range, then it is likely that the agent has had to squeeze themselves in order to even put you forwards whilst falling into budget. Squeezing them at this stage, is not going to work - in fact, in that situation you've probably already squeezed the agent more than they are comfortable with.

The following is insight into my personal employment terms, but I believe is quite common.

I cannot do anything that leaves me with a MARGIN of less than 12% (which is about 15% Mark up). If I need to go below this, I have to make a business case to my Director, which makes me very unpopular - and is something I cannot do regularly.

So if I've squeezed myself right down before putting you across, I have no headroom. Negotiating UPWARDS with a client just doesn't happen.

If there's some headroom in the rate (i.e I've put 20% margin on because it's spot business) then yes, you can negotiate. I personally don't mind disclosing pay and charge rates to candidates when the agreement with the client is set - for ad-hoc business, this is where we look to make our "big margins".

There is a common mis-conception that we only put candidates across to the client that we can make good margin on - that's simply not true. We normally have a lot of competition, therefore discounting someone because they are not a high enough margin candidate is counter-productive, because you can bet your bottom dollar that the next agent along will come along with that person at half the margin rate and make it stick. With that in mind, when I'm looking to fill a role, then my biggest consideration is whether they will get, and accept the job - the maths comes later on!

Feel free to ask for clarification on any of the above.

[HairyArsedBloke]

You are supposed to represent me to your client

NB: I am not having a go at malvolio.

This is something that I have seen in many posts: the mistaken idea that an agent 'represents' the contractor. No!

The agent is acting for clientco (and their own self interest). Never are they ever acting in the interests of the contractor, unless it coincides with the interests of the other two parties.

[The Agents View]

Yours is not supposed to be an industry, that's what I do. Anyway, having some experience of your industry myself...

You are supposed to represent me to your client if I am up to the job and have the requisite ability. What you (sorry that's a generic "you", not you personally) actually do is maximise your return on your sales effort by investing as little effort as possible in screening CVs, preferably using keyword searching rather than analysis and not wasting time finding out anything about me that's not on the CV in large bold lettering and preferably double-underlined. The more spoihisitacted of you delegate this task to some poor grad who hasn't got 8 years inthe industry and has no chance of understanding a history like mine, so you only get to see a subset of the potential candidates anyway.

Also your "industry" is driven by bean counters who are commoditising the market and treating us experts (for instance I've got over 30 years in my trade, which makes your 8 look a little paltry) as sales items and not professionals. The net result is that you are not servicing your clients as well as you can in the interests of expediency and sales targets

Discuss...

I asked for questions, not abuse with "discuss" at the end!!

However.

You are supposed to represent me to your client if I am up to the job and have the requisite ability.

Not necessarily. For me personally, there are a thousand variables here - to mention a few:

Attitude
Cultural match (and yes, we can tell)
Skills
Experience
Previous history of delivery/completion
Cost

Our role is NOT to represent everyone who has the ability to do the job, our role is to shortlist a selection of people who satisfy all of the above, and advise on the best solution for the client. You SHOULD be able to think of an agency as the first interview process. (I will come onto the pitfalls of this in a second).

actually do is maximise your return on your sales effort by investing as little effort as possible in screening CVs, preferably using keyword searching rather than analysis and not wasting time finding out anything about me that's not on the CV in large bold lettering and preferably double-underlined. The more spoihisitacted of you delegate this task to some poor grad who hasn't got 8 years inthe industry and has no chance of understanding a history like mine, so you only get to see a subset of the potential candidates anyway.

Unfortunately, the majority of what you say above is true in alot of cases.

Key word searching is more prevalent in the IT sector certainly, but this is where contractors and experts such as yourself can become confused. Ultimately it is the decision of the end client as to what we are looking for, and whilst some of us have the experience to push back and argue the requirement for certain skills and technologies, the majority don't. Ultimately though, if I've had a conversation with a client, who has decided that the skill set they need is JAVA for example, and despite arguing, they maintain this position, I'm afraid if you don't have the word Java in your CV, you will never get a look in, whether you are able to use it, could learn it, or could blag it.

I have a resourcer here. She's 28 years old, and has about 2 years of experience at this level. I am extremely lucky, and I do appreciate that most of the resourcers you guys speak to, will be fresh grads who have no idea what they are talking about - my suggestion here would be to speak to them, tell them what you think they want to hear, and get yourself speaking to the agent who is in charge of that person - Anyone I put forward generally has had about 30 minutes of discussion - in which time I should have a good feel for whether my client is going to like them.

Unfortunately, and I do mean this, there is a large number who have the sole intention of getting as many people in front of the client as possible. There are things going on to try and overcome this in the industry, but until the recruitment market is regulated properly, there is unlikely to be any let up.

As for maximising sales - is this not what every business is about?

your thoughts?

[Zippy]

Do you thnk is is a good idea for all agents to volunteer information on margins?
I ask this because contractors wll inevitably find out, either by beng told by the client (I know they shouldn't, but they do) or by honing the skill of rapidly scanning the invoice sitting on the clients desk .

[The Agents View]

Also your "industry" is driven by bean counters who are commoditising the market and treating us experts (for instance I've got over 30 years in my trade, which makes your 8 look a little paltry) as sales items and not professionals. The net result is that you are not servicing your clients as well as you can in the interests of expediency and sales targets

Sorry missed out on this bit.

As well as answering questions, I'm open to suggestions here. Unfortunately, bean counters have very black and white brains - if it doesn't fall into a cost, a revenue, or a tax, then frankly, it scares the Sh1t out of them. Undoubtedly, bean counters are important (sales people are RUBBISH at invoicing, paperwork, administration, contracts, etc), but how would you like to see the business operated practically? I do as much as I possibly can to bridge the gap between our finance people and my candidates, but sometimes there are limits with what I can do.

Unfortunately, the commodotisation of the candidate pool is reflective of the market at the moment - the fact is that if I post jobs, I tend to get a mass of irrelevant CV's - I simply cannot get through all of them, which unfortunately leaves those who have applied, feeling neglected. There's no real simple solution to this, as at the initial screening, giving 400 people detailed feedback simply isn't practical, or a good use of my time, when my client expects delivery.

This is one I'd definitely like to open up to the other agents and see if they have any further thoughts - I might even be able to get some of them implemented here!

[d000hg]

I asked for questions, not abuse with "discuss" at the end!!

This thread would be much more enlightening, and likely to get more questions answered by TAV, if people could only use it to ask questions, not bitch about agents. It's not like CUK doesn't have enough threads on that subject already, this one at least might have some usefulness.

[The Agents View]

Do you thnk is is a good idea for all agents to volunteer information on margins?
I ask this because contractors wll inevitably find out, either by beng told by the client (I know they shouldn't, but they do) or by honing the skill of rapidly scanning the invoice sitting on the clients desk .

Now this is a really interesting one.

In an ideal world, nobody would ever have a shock to find what their agency is charging.

However, some of the issues I have seen quoted here, are ridiculous. It's a lack of understanding of what we charge that causes the conflict, not the principal of the matter.

First thing to understand is that agencies work on MARGIN, WE DO NOT WORK ON MARK UP

In my experience, you've got a traffic light effect. Anything below 12% is Red, and often means the business won't happen. Amber is anything from about 15% to 17.5%, and 17.5% upwards is Green.

You will get roughly 80-85% of the total rate paid by the client, and unfortunately, that is the way the market has been set up - honestly, I can't see that changing either.

In answer to your question, it would be nice to see complete transparency, unfortunately the agendas of contractors and agents are polar opposites, so given the lack of understanding from the contractor side (and the client side often) this is unlikely to happen any time soon.

Don't even get me started on HR and Procurement people!