I used to recruit developers in my previous perm role and it's correct that agencies charge a % of the employee's first year salary. What that % is really depends how much negotiation the company is willing to do and how desperate the agent/company is to find the right person.
At best we had agencies working on 10%, at worst 18%. Generally they word their contracts very craftily so that the fee includes any contractual bonuses so if the employee is getting £40k plus a 10% bonus then the rate is considered on £44k.
Most of the agencies we used will invoice as soon as the candidate is placed but they will have a sliding scale for rebates if the candidate leaves within the first 12 weeks, so for example within first 4 weeks it might be 80% rebate, 4 - 6 weeks 60%, 6 - 8 weeks 40% and so on.
It's a lot of money and my boss used to hate using agencies for this reason, but my experience of advertising directly was even worse - put a job spec on Monster and you literally get anybody apply for the role even if they've got zero development experience, so you get bombarded with tulip CVs and out of 100 crap ones there might be 1 or 2 potential candidates. Plus to make matters worse, as soon as you've advertised on Monster you will inevitably get CVs from agencies who've seen the job spec and want to pitch their candidates. They don't seem to appreciate that if you wanted to use an agency, that's what you would've done!!!
[Mini rant over...]
At best we had agencies working on 10%, at worst 18%. Generally they word their contracts very craftily so that the fee includes any contractual bonuses so if the employee is getting £40k plus a 10% bonus then the rate is considered on £44k.
Most of the agencies we used will invoice as soon as the candidate is placed but they will have a sliding scale for rebates if the candidate leaves within the first 12 weeks, so for example within first 4 weeks it might be 80% rebate, 4 - 6 weeks 60%, 6 - 8 weeks 40% and so on.
It's a lot of money and my boss used to hate using agencies for this reason, but my experience of advertising directly was even worse - put a job spec on Monster and you literally get anybody apply for the role even if they've got zero development experience, so you get bombarded with tulip CVs and out of 100 crap ones there might be 1 or 2 potential candidates. Plus to make matters worse, as soon as you've advertised on Monster you will inevitably get CVs from agencies who've seen the job spec and want to pitch their candidates. They don't seem to appreciate that if you wanted to use an agency, that's what you would've done!!!
[Mini rant over...]
Comment