Reply to: Anyone actually got a role via Indian agencies?

[SueEllen]

Which might explain the large amount of agency roles popping up in London..?

Depends what type of roles you are talking about.

[KentDogWalker]

Which might explain the large amount of agency roles popping up in London..?

[SueEllen]

Who is letting all these agencies in?

Large companies.

The Indian companies say they can do the work for less so win the contract. The CEO, CIO and other accountants at the client are happy.

The staff on the floor who aren't made redundant have to manager the outsourcer. Seeing the crap they produce late, they start to stipulate things e.g. X amount of the outsourcers staff must come to the site, we want to interview them ourselves.

So the Indian companies get their pals to set up recruitment agencies to get around EU law.

However the staff managing the outsourcers staff start kicking off as even with the extra requirements the work produced is still tulip. So the Indian consultancies hire a few European bods at normal rates using European agencies to keep the contract. This doesn't always work.

BTW some European including UK consultancies are equally bad. You only get to learn this when you are dumping work over the fence for their developers to pick up and do, integrating stuff with it or are testing it.

[KentDogWalker]

Wow, truly shocking

[Dactylion]

what sort of p-takes?

a) The ".... could you do it for £25p/d less..." at each phone call prior to interview
b) The ".... could you do it for £25p/d less..." at each phone call post interview
c) The ".... they would like to offer you the role if you do it for £25p/d less..."
d) The "... would you like to do this role as a Permie...." 2 days into contract
e) The ".... our client has cut our rate by £50p/d - we want to cut yours...." a couple of weeks into contract

I am OK with the ".. could you train one of our muppets to do this role...." requests from day 1 as they usually provide a succession of cretins with no hope or desire to actually learn it.

[KentDogWalker]

I have undertaken a couple of roles for/via Indian Companies at "close to normal" rates.

a) Wipro - Who tried very hard to trim the rate at every conceivable opportunity.
Every single conversation during the run-up they were prompting for a cut.
Once started on site I also got "The client has cut our rate so we need to pass this on to you...."
I did point out that we had a contract at rate £x and that I didn't really have any interest in their issues with their client - and that I would happily walk off site if they wanted to breach.

b) Cognizant - Basically same story. Including "client has cut our rate", they also asked if I wanted to do the role as a Perm about a week into the role.

Both these roles were taken during toughish periods where I decided that taking "anything" for a few months beat sitting on the bench.

To be fair the Cognizant gig wasn't that bad overall - once you get over the piss takes.

what sort of p-takes?

[Dactylion]

I have undertaken a couple of roles for/via Indian Companies at "close to normal" rates.

a) Wipro - Who tried very hard to trim the rate at every conceivable opportunity.
Every single conversation during the run-up they were prompting for a cut.
Once started on site I also got "The client has cut our rate so we need to pass this on to you...."
I did point out that we had a contract at rate £x and that I didn't really have any interest in their issues with their client - and that I would happily walk off site if they wanted to breach.

b) Cognizant - Basically same story. Including "client has cut our rate", they also asked if I wanted to do the role as a Perm about a week into the role.

Both these roles were taken during toughish periods where I decided that taking "anything" for a few months beat sitting on the bench.

To be fair the Cognizant gig wasn't that bad overall - once you get over the piss takes.

[KentDogWalker]

Who is letting all these agencies in?

[Crossroads]

Vaguely on-topic... it's looking likely I will be unboomed in Jan despite having a contract as client has internal funding issues, so I'm interviewing elsewhere. Against my better judgement I made time today to have a phone discussion with WiPro after they contacting me Friday pm to set something up for today.

Have they kept their appointment? No... timewasting f**kwits.

[Macaco]

Couldn't agree more there's no skills shortage...only a skill shortage at certain price points, just like there's a shortage of Bentleys at £15,000. The Indian firms jumping into the UK market are just driving down the market in my opinion.

This is one of the drivers of my initial question as to whether anyone is aware of any contracts being won from these agencies/consultanices (TCS, Mahindra, etc) at reasonable UK market rates...and currently no one is aware of this actually happening.

[GB9]

They aren't pitching roles to be filled, they are pitching roles that won't be filled so someone can bring in an ICT to cover the shortage they can't find anyone to take the job in the UK.

That's why we have a "skills shortage", incidentally. We don't, but a lot of skilled people aren't willing to work for uneconomic rates.

I agree.

There is a shortage of skilled people willing to work for F>A>

[ShandyDrinker]

I am not so sure how there is an issue with such agencies.

There are lots of people out there who will rather take a low rate knowing fully well the agent is the one making the money than sit on the bench for a very long period.

My issue is that the more people that normalise these low rates, the more it will become an expectation, leading to a race to the bottom.

From experience I've found that the lower the rate, the more difficult the contract is.

[css_jay99]

I am not so sure how there is an issue with such agencies.

There are lots of people out there who will rather take a low rate knowing fully well the agent is the one making the money than sit on the bench for a very long period.

[ShandyDrinker]

They aren't pitching roles to be filled, they are pitching roles that won't be filled so someone can bring in an ICT to cover the shortage they can't find anyone to take the job in the UK.

That's why we have a "skills shortage", incidentally. We don't, but a lot of skilled people aren't willing to work for uneconomic rates.

^^ This. As has been put so eloquently elsewhere online, there is not a skills gap, just a pay gap. Unfortunately the term pay gap has primarily been used to highlight the pay differential between genders.

[SlipTheJab]

I had one ping me via LinkedIn about teaching a 4 day course for them, rate was £300 a day (inclusive of VAT!), looked on the website and they are charging 3k per attendee, TBH after Googling them even getting paid that would be a long punt, told them to Foxtrot Oscar