Unusual Hiring Process

[alluvial]

What kind of business model is at work here though?

Clientco not man enough to go and find candidates themselves through Pimps-r-us and the likes? So they get Ax-and-turd to do the grunt work for them, getting royally screwed in the process for a massive consideration. Ax-n-turd get pimps-r-us to find candidate and then take a massive cut upfront on a 6 month assignment based rate, and then get out of the mix? Why is this so convoluted? Something doesn’t smell right.

It's quite simple really HR numpties think that is the way it should be done.

[malvolio]

It's quite simple really HR numpties think that is the way it should be done.

Nope, it's about risk management. By bringing in a major consultancy company they can offload the risks in the programme. The fact they're now paying four times what they need to pay for staff is irrelevant since it's still less than the cost of the risk they have offloaded. The fact that they still get the same, usually contract staff on site to do the work -so the level of risk is exactly the same as if they'd done it in house - never crosses their mind. And Accenture won't tell them, will they...

[BrilloPad]

I have interviewed a few times to go via 2 agents. Always ended badly and I won't do it again. Too much to go wrong.

[SussexSeagull]

Mandatory as in they tell you 10 hr days are expected? **** that,.

They have the rare gift of being able to work long hours without seemingly getting anything done yet looking permanently busy.

[alluvial]

Nope, it's about risk management. By bringing in a major consultancy company they can offload the risks in the programme. The fact they're now paying four times what they need to pay for staff is irrelevant since it's still less than the cost of the risk they have offloaded. The fact that they still get the same, usually contract staff on site to do the work -so the level of risk is exactly the same as if they'd done it in house - never crosses their mind. And Accenture won't tell them, will they...

Nope, it's HR numpties.
They started it when they started to take the hiring and firing powers away from the managers that were looking to resource a project. And because the knew sod all about contractor hiring, they instigated processes to follow that enabled them to resource on behalf of the managers. Of course these processes have to be continuously improved that in reality means made more complex. At some point, some mega-numpty would have the brilliant idea of outsourcing it. They may even have kidded themselves in their little numtpy world that they were de-risking the project by getting someone else to do it, but, all they have done is spread their numtpy HR processes throughout the organisation and also roped in some expensive numpties.
So, I still maintain that it's all due to HR numpties.

[Scruff]

They have the rare gift of being able to work long hours without seemingly getting anything done yet looking permanently busy.

Agreed - I used to work 10-12 hour days, as a minimum. You were expected to "know all the answers" if asked (as a contractor), to do all the risky changes, and to fix the cockups made by the (permie) snot-nosed newbie Grads (who learned it all from White Papers).

They paid double the going rate (at the time).
Middle Management specialised in bull-dusting Senior Management by telling them what they wanted to hear.

I enjoyed my time working with them and when doing work for them for Avanade, the charge out was in excess of £4k per day!

In answer to the OP : I have also worked on site in FMCG, as a contractor for IBM, where IBM did the hiring of contractors, who contracted to the the FMCG. It isn't that unusual for Consultancies to act as the intermediary.

[malvolio]

Nope, it's HR numpties.
They started it when they started to take the hiring and firing powers away from the managers that were looking to resource a project. And because the knew sod all about contractor hiring, they instigated processes to follow that enabled them to resource on behalf of the managers. Of course these processes have to be continuously improved that in reality means made more complex. At some point, some mega-numpty would have the brilliant idea of outsourcing it. They may even have kidded themselves in their little numtpy world that they were de-risking the project by getting someone else to do it, but, all they have done is spread their numtpy HR processes throughout the organisation and also roped in some expensive numpties.
So, I still maintain that it's all due to HR numpties.

No, it's management. you're confusing RPO with BPO...

Use a consultancy of any kind and you switch from revenue spend to project/asset spend budgets. good for the long term bottom line. But if you're giving away major business functions to outsiders, you want the best so you hire the Big 5. What you don't realise is that they then go out and hire contractors to fill in the gaps in their own staff's experience that they didn't tell the client existed. So the client still ends up with freelance contractors doing all the work, but at four times the cost.

Using a consultancy to run your hiring for you is equally stupid: you lose control of your key resource, which is your own staff, and you are still hiring part time double-glazing salesmen since the senior people in the consultancy doing the hiring are too expensive to be used for general recruitment.

Either way, when you get to the bottom of it all, it's a couple of naïve senior managers - of which the UK has thousands - having no idea what they are doing, being led by the nose by smart sales techniques, and having to answer to bean counters who can only see as far as the financial month end.

[Dallas]

Its a bit special here too. We use some smaller Consultancies, that are oooops ....... part owned by the MDs, and the other half of that partnership has a child in as an intern.

Stinks

[thunderlizard]

I would guess:

(1) the slightest hint of a requirement for an expert has arisen
(2) Accenture have gone ahead and engaged the agency and interviewed you, in the hope they can add you to their roll of consultants and charge you to the client
(3) Accenture have then mentioned this to the client, and client has said "why would we want to pay you to pay an agent to pay a contractor when we could pay the agent less, directly"?
(4) Some sort of argument is going on about how to hire you but everybody wants their commission or finder's fee.