Reply to: How do we break the current crappy contractor system?

[Hobosapien]

This may be true and not a problem when things are going well, but it's when things don't quite go as planned that this falls apart.

After all, who is likely to have more liquidity and greater cashflow? The large, national (or multi-national) client, or the fly-by-night agency that lives hand-to-mouth? Who do you think is more likely to be able to pay your invoices when a significant amount of creditors come calling at the same time?

I hear you, and having been stung by a dodgy agency run by thieves (or so incompetent they may as well be) I am very wary of pursuing contract work via small agencies with no longevity and positive reputation. The smaller the agency the tighter the billing cycle I want and the less bs I'll take if they start coming up with excuses about late payment.

Fortunately my more recent contracts have been with agencies larger than the clients, that offer weekly billing cycles and absolutely no hassle at all (things haven't gone wrong to test that though).

[tomtomagain]

I did get the sarcastic point of reinventing LinkedIn

My point wasn't about re-inventing LinkedIn, but that LinkedIn exists and that MS could use it to revolutionise recruitment. And could essentially mandate it's usage by tying it tightly into AD/Azure AD ( which they have already started to do ).

Nice observation about SO. I hadn't considered it, it's "just a Q&A forum" right? Wrong. It's a database of skilled people.

So back on the original question of:

How do we break the current crappy contractor system?

Well contractors cannot break the system, because they are the suppliers and not the buyers. The buyers need to want a different system and to change it would take someone with a lot of resources to make it happen.

[BlasterBates]

There are already plenty of web portals where clients can post contract vacancies such as jobserve and where contractors can post their profiles and companies can look for them. A new website would change nothing. Clients will still contact agencies because sifting through these web sites looking for suitable candidates is still a lot of work.

[billybiro]

Haha haha.

Missed entirely the point you have.

I did get the sarcastic point of reinventing LinkedIn but I thought I'd inject some more serious words. Stack Overflow are, slow but surely but quite successfully by all accounts, slowly replacing the traditional 3rd party recruitment agents in the world of permanent employment by cultivating the supply which allows the demand to follow, direct from the employers.

There's really nothing to say that the same couldn't work for the contractor model except for the fact that they'd be dealing with idiots like you who need to take their thumb from out of their arse.

[tomtomagain]

Interesting replies here, definitely some things to think on. I smirked at the LinkedIn joke,

After I posted I had a look around Office 365. I was quickly able to link my LinkedIn profile to my Office 365/Azure AD account.

Now when I search for people in Outlook it also returns my "Contacts" from LI. Opening a person's "Persona" Card in O365 and it also scans LI and fills in extra information.


Microsoft have all the components they need ( Office, AD, LinkedIn ) to totally revolutionise recruitment. Whether that is something they want to go after, I don't know.

[northernladuk]

We've got 3-4 really popular accounting platforms to choose from (Xero, Quickbooks, FreeAgent, Sage, etc.) but I can't think of anything that covers the contractor engagement process that literally thousands of agencies must use over and over. A few of them implement their own half-arsed systems for some of this stuff, but I've seen nothing that really covers it.

Maybe that's the best answer - make agencies function better by creating a platform where *they're* the product, with a system so slick that it can't help but make them better.

But the platforms you have indicated are just bookkeeping tools. You still need an accountant behind it. If you had a slick agency portal you'd sill need an agent to do the background stuff.

You are only thinking about a small part of what agencies do.

[cloudcontractor]

Interesting replies here, definitely some things to think on. I smirked at the LinkedIn joke, but I don't really regard it as more than a glorified jobs board in terms of actual job adverts placed there. Some of the insights are fun (premium only) that tell you you have skills/keywords in the 'top 25% of applicants' and whatnot. But a couple of issues there - I almost never see contracting roles advertised, and what ads I have seen are a very thin veneer which essentially just delivers your details to an agency and they do the regular follow-up. There's nothing really holistic and end-to-end about it. Certainly no integration with anything that manages and oversees the process to your start day.

I think a lot of contracts are off job board and come direct from an agency pinging you? That's my experience, although I'm spammed constantly with all sorts of tulipe.

Perhaps the required product is some kind of well-supported, well-designed platform where a contractor can submit (and indeed, keep on file) the details that are asked of you each and every time you engage, where the contract is delivered for inspection, and approved/rejected/amendments requested online. Timesheets submitted in a way that can properly integrate with a variety of back-end vendors for the larger orgs that use them for internal time-keeping. No more submitting timesheets twice into different systems, or by god, getting a piece of paper and making someone sign it. Other features you and they would like to see to expedite the process. Quicker turnaround for all involved. Longitudinal awareness of a contractor's history - the ability to prove job experience through the platform itself.

Sure, things _like_ that sort of exist (My last agency used thecontractorportal.com, which looks like it was designed in 2003 for someone's A-level project), but I don't know of anything properly architected, supported, and sold to these agencies as the best-of-industry solution.

We've got 3-4 really popular accounting platforms to choose from (Xero, Quickbooks, FreeAgent, Sage, etc.) but I can't think of anything that covers the contractor engagement process that literally thousands of agencies must use over and over. A few of them implement their own half-arsed systems for some of this stuff, but I've seen nothing that really covers it.

Maybe that's the best answer - make agencies function better by creating a platform where *they're* the product, with a system so slick that it can't help but make them better.

[Lance]

Interestingly, this is exactly what Stack Overflow have done / are doing, albeit much more aligned to permanent staff.

Haha haha.

Missed entirely the point you have.

[Lance]

Options

1. Learn the difference between agents who work on contingency and those who work on margin. Build relationships with the latter.
2. Go on a sales course. Learn how to cold call and not fear the phone or rejection. Combine with LinkedIn.
3. Reject the keep my head down contractor attitude, and stand out from the crowd by doing it your way - unless you are tulip.
4. Blow a couple of mil on cars and beat customers off with a tulipty stick.

2,3 + 4 worked for me. 4 is somewhat risky, buy hey YOLO.

Start thinking like a ******* business, not just filling out the forms of one.

Oh, strangers.

Yeah. 3.

A bit of 1 as well, but mainly 3.

[billybiro]

b. From a contractor point of view the second most important thing an agency does (after the most important thing of finding the contract) is invoice factoring. Weekly or fortnightly and even monthly invoice payments can be a damn site quicker than typical client billing cycles. That also reduces the exposure to risk of non-payment. i.e. the shorter the cycle from invoice to payment the better.

This may be true and not a problem when things are going well, but it's when things don't quite go as planned that this falls apart.

After all, who is likely to have more liquidity and greater cashflow? The large, national (or multi-national) client, or the fly-by-night agency that lives hand-to-mouth? Who do you think is more likely to be able to pay your invoices when a significant amount of creditors come calling at the same time?

[billybiro]

What you need to do is create some sort of online "Professional Network" of around 750 million employers, contractors and permanent staff.

Create an online space for everyone to upload their CV's and for companies to create what are effectively marketing pages.

Allow people to rate each other, comment on their skills and past achievements.

Make it free to join to allow you to build a critical mass.

Once you have cornered the "supply-side" of the market then you can then offer premium tools and services to company recruiters, agents and the professionals on your network to assist in job/contract finding. CV sifting ( AI anyone? ), interview scheduling.

It's then only a small hop from being an effective "match-maker" to replacing the agent by offering contracts, payments and dispute resolutions services and therefore becoming in the worlds single largest agency.

It would be helpful if you owned the worlds preeminent productivity suite of software, you could then deeply integrate your Professional Network with things like word-processors, spreadsheets, email programs and the like. You know the products? The ones that 95% of managers use 95% of their working day.

If you also owned the worlds defacto corporate identity and permissions management platform you could integrate it with your Professional Network, thus steering all professionals to create an account on your Professional Network as they'd need an account in order to be able to join their end-clients IT systems. Of course you wouldn't make this mandatory at first, start off by using presenting it as a way of simplifying initial account set-up ( copying in name, mobile number, job titles etc ).

Once you've done all that you have all the people and all the hirers of the people and all the tools needed to LinkIn.

Interestingly, this is exactly what Stack Overflow have done / are doing, albeit much more aligned to permanent staff.

Build an online community of developers and other IT professionals who can help each other with development and IT related problems. Build the system such that members are "rated" for their contributions via gamification of a reputation system. Once the community has grown to a significant enough size, add on a "Careers" section. Then the clients (i.e. employers) come flocking since there's now a ready-built and vetted community to pick from.

They never used to allow agents to advertise on the Careers section, but I think they've relaxed that a little nowadays. One thing they do insist on is that any agents must disclose the client they're representing up-front!

I'm not saying it's perfect, but it seems to be working very well for them. (I've known people who've worked at Stack Overflow and I know that the Careers section of the website is where they make most of their money so clearly many clients think there's something in this, too).

[clearedforlanding]

Options

1. Learn the difference between agents who work on contingency and those who work on margin. Build relationships with the latter.
2. Go on a sales course. Learn how to cold call and not fear the phone or rejection. Combine with LinkedIn.
3. Reject the keep my head down contractor attitude, and stand out from the crowd by doing it your way - unless you are tulip.
4. Blow a couple of mil on cars and beat customers off with a tulipty stick.

2,3 + 4 worked for me. 4 is somewhat risky, buy hey YOLO.

Start thinking like a ******* business, not just filling out the forms of one.

Oh, strangers.

[jamesbrown]

Sounds too simple, probably is

I cannot see the incentive for an agent to move from "representing the interests of" (read: maximising profits with respect to ) one large client to many contractors to "representing the interests of" (read: maximising profits with respect to ) many contractors to one large client.

[malvolio]

I'e broached one potential solution with various agencies over the years. Only one was willing to give it a go, but promptly went into liquidation...

However, the solution is actually quite simple - we pay the agency, not the client.

Think about it. The client saves 15% or so of his contractor costs (As opposed to the new rules adding 25% or so...). The agency is incentivised to keep you in work, at the highest possible rate. Over time agencies will build genuine stables of good people - rather like they say they do now but never, ever actually do so - whose skills and availability they know well. Some may even specialise in certain areas so become the go-to source of the best people.

Sounds too simple, probably is.

I only recently worked out why it doesn't appeal. The agents' pay is determined by targets that are about things that are actually irrelevant to delivering good contractors to clients and positively discriminate against them spending time with us. My proposed model puts them on a whole other pay basis and requires them actually to do some real work.

Heigh ho...

[Brussels Slumdog]

Going direct is ok if you only want to work near to home.
If you wish to lie on the beach and don't care where the next contract will be then you can't beat going via an agent.
Let the agent look for your work while you do other things.

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