agents

[Cliphead]

Haven't used an agency in years and never will again. Direct to client

[DodgyAgent]

Seriously...why do contractors need agents?

I first contracted in London in 1993. I have worked in every single sector you can think of in the UK, from 22 quid an hour to over a grand a day and one thing stands out compared to the general recruitment approach internationally.

UK IT recruiting is a completely unprofessional arena.

Now it's even spread to Australia with the plethora of UK nats there.

7 words...cut costs, go straight to the client!

Whilst I understand the frustration that many contractors feel the bad news for people like you is that the system works. If you want to go direct then you are free to do so. If a company wishes to engage a process whereby they don't get 250,000 contractors ringing them up looking for work or 3000 agencies looking for business they are free to do so.

And before contractors start throwing accusations of "unprofessionalism" around they might like to look at their own house and ask why clients have relentlessly sought other more secure solutions than hiring contractors.

[eek]

I agree.

From a practical point of view, most contractors do behave day-to-day like employees.

The point is, chasing clients is time consuming and can be costly, and it requires certain skills that most contractors do not have much of. Doing it while you are still carrying out an existing contract is a pain in the bum.

WDSS

I always look at it as an agent is my salesman taking a commission for the work he has done for me.

Granted he has control over the total amount of commission he gets (which is something I don't like) but if I was in business for people beyond myself (and in the past I did run my own consultancy for a while) I would be employing a salesman to do the exact same job.

[minestrone]

I went direct on a gig recently and got a couple of friends in direct as well. Had a terrible time getting paid and there was an added hassle as I would have felt responsible if my friends never got paid. Agents are very often complete idiots ( sorry dodgy but they are ) but they know how to make sure the money gets to you from the client. Sometimes you have to view their cut as outsourcing costs for a legal team, sales team and financial director rather than simply as some mafia profiteering racket. Truth is somewhere in between and varies on each contract you sign but it is not either end of the spectrum.

I take the view just now that agents are driving up my costs, market is very good just now and high quality skills are not exactly in abundance but when the market was bad they were driving down my costs. That is the free market.

The current problems are with legislation that allows Bobs to come in and companies that use whole Bob teams, not with agencies. As a slight side point the market is good just now as hardly anyone is recruiting and training youth to do what I do, the amount of people who can do the job is decreasing as the amount of roles requiring high end IT skills increases.

</endRamblingPost>

[fullyautomatix]

I went direct on a gig recently and got a couple of friends in direct as well. Had a terrible time getting paid and there was an added hassle as I would have felt responsible if my friends never got paid. Agents are very often complete idiots ( sorry dodgy but they are ) but they know how to make sure the money gets to you from the client. Sometimes you have to view their cut as outsourcing costs for a legal team, sales team and financial director rather than simply as some mafia profiteering racket. Truth is somewhere in between and varies on each contract you sign but it is not either end of the spectrum.

</endRamblingPost>

It doesnt help if you hold a butcher's knife at the payroll officer's throat and demand your money. Need to be a bit more subtle.

[JamJarST]

Whilst agents may be required to connect contractor with client what I find baffling is why the contract should be three way client -> agent -> contractor. What does the client get out of it ?

The client gets one or two approved suppliers rather than many, they get someone to find the candidates for them, they don't have to worry about multiple contracts, etc.

[JamJarST]

The current problems are with legislation that allows Bobs to come in and companies that use whole Bob teams, not with agencies.

Fortunately more and more clients are relising that a large majority of the Bobs providing much cheapness are rubbish.

[minestrone]

It doesnt help if you hold a butcher's knife at the payroll officer's throat and demand your money. Need to be a bit more subtle.

It was the "does your wife still drive the blue Fiat?" that eventually done the trick

Actually one of the friends part owns a contractor accountancy that advertises on this site so were not unhanded in this battle of payroll.

[realityhack]

I went from 'freelance', where I was direct to the client, to contracting. Working direct was very difficult, fresh out of university, no warchest, and 90-day payment regardless of the terms stated on my invoices. Always having to spend 20% of my time developing leads. Always having to chase accounts payable, and yet suppliers required immediate payment for equipment.

With contracting, you factor in the accountancy/insurance fees as part of your rate, and enjoy the agency taking the invoice-to-remittance-risk, leaving you to work with little distraction, build up a tidy warchest, and network (evidenced by your results, proving your value) to the point where you can go direct with little personal impact.

Either way, it's down to you being happy with the net rate you bring in, and the cash flow. If your contacts book and warchest are packed, direct is arguably more profitable.

[minestrone]

Fortunately more and more clients are relising that a large majority of the Bobs providing much cheapness are rubbish.

I think this is something we have been continuing to tell ourselves for years but is not true. For every feck up they do I hear about another team being offshored or onshored. THe people that make these decisions could not care less for quality of product, only the cost. The only continuous I feel is that there are very few grads being trained now, the work force is aging and eventually we will reach a stall point where nobody will come here for native skill force which is the biggest selling point for inward IT investment.