Agency Free Contracting?

[DodgyAgent]

Hello,

I like a lot of other people hate agencies and I also hate the fact that make so much money out of contractors for doing next to nothing.

I was thinking the other day how I could get away from having to deal with agencies and deal direct with the client.

I think some sort of contractor alliance which operated behind a website which authorised clients could access would be a good idea, but it would take some advertising.

So essentially you register at this site and upload your cv, fill out a profile containing your skills, which locations you will work in and keep your availability up to date. You make clients aware of this and create hem an account to use. They can search on various criteria such as skills and location, view reviews which other clients have left from your previous gigs etc. They can contact you via email, or directly in the website. They can post job ads in a forum etc. I'm sure with a bit more thought and input from others you could stick a load more ideas on the list. Contractors would need to invited by other members so you can have some control over who get in and you could also control who was allowed to join by their skill set so the place doesn't become saturated.

I know you can do something similar on sites like Monster but you still have the problem with agents. You could ban agents from the site and only give out accounts to clients. The contractor would pay a small annual fee which would go towards paying the hosting costs and doing any advertising and marketing. This would be a non-profit organisation with full transparency on the finances. The site could obviously be created by the contractors, or maybe it could be outsourced

What do you think about the idea? Getting it out there would be the tricky part but if everyone reading this made there client aware today that such a service exists and gave them an account you would be already well on your way.

Can anyone see any problems with this? Or do you have any reasons why it wouldn't appeal to you? Does something pretty much the same already exist?

You are a silly little twerp with no idea of how a business works. I suggest that you stick to playing Warcraft.

[SueEllen]

There are already sites that are out there and do this.

Plus you are in competition with sites like Monster where both companies and agencies can post jobs and search CVs for a fee.

Monster is a brand name. So unless you want to spend time and money getting your brand in the public domain you are wasting your time.

[thunderlizard]

You will be the 903rd person to have tried this idea

and the 903rd person to fail

well there's elance and rentacoder at least, so he'd only be the 901st to fail.

& I reckon you'd do better if you set up a similar site, but took a firmer hand on what was put on it - e.g. maybe set minimum rates for things; advertise more aggressively to higher-end clients; offered a premium service that included human CV-filtering.

[jkoder]

Oops, didn't notice the CA sticky. So does anyone have any feedback on this? Is it worth signing up for? I guess at the asking price it can't be too bad but I see it's for the UK only. No good to me right now.

I think a site like this could work internationally but as pointed out it would take a lot of work and after thinking about it more a decent contractor would have his own network after a certain amount of years.

@Dodgy Agent, I don't play Warcraft. I don't tell lies for a living either and in my previous sales roles I knew what I was selling, unlike most of your peers.

[jkoder]

There are already sites that are out there and do this.

Plus you are in competition with sites like Monster where both companies and agencies can post jobs and search CVs for a fee.

Monster is a brand name. So unless you want to spend time and money getting your brand in the public domain you are wasting your time.

I'm not so sure, it wouldn't take off overnight but it could work and be more appealing to clients. The agency fee could be scrapped and if the contractors are screened you could guarantee quality, removing people with bad reviews. The advertising could be done by the contractors themselves but this would be the tricky part, I am not sure about the level of camaraderie between contractors, it seems a pretty dog eat dog, every man or woman for themselves. After more thinking you would probably end up with a bunch of people who couldn't find contracts easily, I mean why would a contractor with a good name and network want to share his clients with others? I should have thought about this more, and maybe even read the stickies

[jmo21]

what part of the "monster already lets companies post jobs" part did you not read?

same for Jobserve, and probably most other job websites.

so what you are really suggesting is yet another recruitment website, but limiting it to only those jobs not put through agents

[jkoder]

so what you are really suggesting is yet another recruitment website

Yes, exactly, but a more interactive version with benefits for both parties. The idea I proposed is different to any current commercial sites I know of but would probably fail in other areas I mentioned in later posts, none of which are reasons as mentioned by most posters, including yourself. I think it's you who didn't read the complete thread.