Reply to: Help Needed - New Recruitment Service

yes

Viking,

having read all of your post,

this sentence sticks in my mind,

"Obviously I was wrong, and that todays contractor is very happy with the relationship they have with their agency and are in no way interested in looking to alternatives, no matter how novel they may be.
",

don't give up,

if you think this is an opportunity, keep chipping away it.

I would observe, that contractors would sit up and listen as soon as it was demonstrated that what you are offering works - with results.

Too many people in life give up at the first hurdle, that's why the hurdles are there, keep going, refine your offering and educate the contractors.

Milan.

Re: OK Now we are getting somewhere

Oak: I'm not ignoring you, I am still mulling over some of the things you have said about marketing the service to the agencies. With regard to the business advice given and budgets, have no fear we have already spent more than that getting this far and our marketing budget is set to 10K per quarter at present, so we are committed to this.

MilanB: Thanks for your support, I have been a member of this board and a contractor for long enough to know the types that frequent this board and to take things with a pinch of salt. If I wasn't prepared for some of the responses I knew I would get about the FP site, I wouldn't have said anything.

I was concerned though that we were not getting the right message across until Oak started to latch on to what we are trying to do. As I said in previous posts the service we offer is designed to appeal to the corporate HR recruiter and hiring manager, not contractors, but I thought with all the grief that we have to suffer from pimps, contractors on this board would welcome an opportunity to develop something that would ultimately benefit everyone.

Obviously I was wrong, and that todays contractor is very happy with the relationship they have with their agency and are in no way interested in looking to alternatives, no matter how novel they may be.

It may be because I have never been a permie (while I was on my industrial placement I met an ops manager who got me my first contract when I finished my degree so I went straight into contracting) that I have a different perspective on things, but I have always believed that going direct is the Holy Grail for contractors and that pimps were a necessary evil until a better way came along, well that started to change with the Internet.

And you are correct in your assertion that clients don't like to post jobs directly because they will be inundated with CVs, however as I keep trying to explain on this board, that's why CVBuddies was created. We will filter and rank all CVs against the job spec. and provide those CVs to the client via a web based portal so the client can review them at their leisure, in case no-one understands what I mean by ranking, let me simply say those which suit best are at the top, those which are cr@p are at the bottom.

With regard to you other comment about clients being protected by the agency from employment law, that is not necessarily the case. There has always been a discrepancy between contract law and the Inland Revenue and this has never been easier to see than with IR35. However, IR35 has cleared the air and if a contract is written which falls within IR35 then the IR are clearly accepting that the contractor is liable for tax. If a contract is written outside IR35, then the provision of services are such that the IR cannot make the assumption that the client is liable to tax as the service is being provided by another limited liability company which itself is liable for the tax.

In respect of any other employment laws, as has been clearly discussed many times on his board, the contract protects the client from any liability. In fact the current UK Agency Regs which were introduced this year are only applicable to contractors and temps who work or are employed via an agency or employment business, so if contractors go direct these regulations do not apply (no need to opt-in or opt-out).

Re: OK Now we are getting somewhere

my 2 pence,

Viking, take a lot of what's said here with a pinch of salt, a lot of them here like to run others down just for the fun of it

back to business,

you said:

"In the past it was too expensive for clients to advertise for positions in the press and to maintain databases of candidate CVs. So the recruitment agency was born and these agencies were able to use economies of scale to advertise for positions "

I think you have missed a fundamental here,

companies do not advertise IT jobs in the press because they would receive a thousand and one cv's from everyone from potential candidates to tea-ladies trying IT on

enter the agency which filters the candidates and so say provides a service,

not to mention the liability the agency removes from the end client to hire and fire and not get caught (yet) by their contractors being employees and covered at the liability of the end client by employment law

that's it, good luck

Milan.

Re: OK Now we are getting somewhere

Now for the bad news.

Ninedots Software have just sent me a package called "CandidateCatcher" which offers something similar to agencies although it won't auto-filter.

Your problems are IMO:-

1)Clients will not trust your software to work properly.
2)Because of 1), they'll use agencies to sift the rubbish.

In essence you are looking stuffed.
BUT....
The way to fix problem 1 is to meet and greet clients and allow them free demos.
Your demo should retain all personal information but show the client the actual CV's. They can then determine for themselves whether or not you product is any good.
Clients will not buy your product but they WILL buy you.
In other words networking is your only hope of success.
I think you have a chance here actually but your fee should be based on successful placement.
Alternatively, offer to run the software for them for an extra 2% commission.

One other bit of advice. If you are serious about this then get some Marketing and PR people involved. Contact me on info@oaksoft-consultancy.com and I will recommend some people for you. To get publicity, you would do worse than getting an article in the Press. My contacts can help you get there but Marketing/PR is not cheap.
If you like my website at www.gameon-sports.com I can pass you their details too. All 3 guys worked together on my football business and the result is pretty good I think.

Bear also in mind that a client will pay 10-30% commission for a placement and so you are underselling your product.
That makes it look cheap and nasty.
You should be charging around £3000 for a placement.
You should also aim your product at agencies and set an appropriate daily/monthly charge for access.

How you approach this will determine how serious you are about launching this and making it successful.
I would reckon you'd need to spend around:-

- £700 to £1000 on website including design.
- £1500 on PR.
- £1500 on Marketing consultancy.
- £1500 on brochures.
- £800 on an exhibition stand to display at Recruitment Fairs etc.
- £4k on office and staff to do some cold calling and appointment bookings for you (3 month temps).

This would require you to invest and gamble around £10k to £12k making this work. If you are not prepared to do this then I'd question your committment to it and your belief in it.

You genuinely might convince me to become your first customer but you'll need to meet me to convince me.
The idea in itself is actually very good but I think you are targetting the wrong market with it.

I can see huge potential in this. Contact me on info@oaksoft-consultancy.com if you want to discuss this offline.

Best of luck.

Re: I think I know what this is about

Hmmm, Aalsmeer...

Perhaps you should stick to selling flowers!

Re: I think I know what this is about

By jove, I think he's got it

Oak you are virtually on the button although the job spec actually comes from the client and all we do is tokenise so that Buddytron can process the CVs against it. Oh, and although it is not perfect yet, I can assure you it is a hell of lot better than a pimp who reads the first 10 CVs that come in his inbox and then submits 2 candidates from that after asking them to rewrite their CV to match the profile. Also, the client is provided with all the CVs received in a pagenated format similar to job boards and search engines.

In response to your question about CVs, we were expecting the client to provide the CVs via their choice of job boards and their own internal web site, but having reviewed the many comments on this topic, we have decided to partner up with a job advert blasting service as part of our profile and we are now in the process or re-working our services to include this.

I think I know what this is about

It would have been more helpful if you had answered my questions one by one but I'll extract the pertinent one for now.

Client X enters a job spec which only your software reads in order to know how to filter CV's.
No-one actually sees your "spec".
Your software then fires off the filtered CV's to the client and this will have cost the client no more than the time taken to create the spec.
If your software works (and frankly it's a big "if"), the client will have x perfect CV's and an easy few phone calls to make.
In essence, your software acts as a "virtual agent".

Where are you getting the CV's from?
Are you tapping into the other major job boards and finding them there?

What the @#%$ is Mr. Potatoe Head all about? Looks like a early 1990s site.

Not even County or Post Code mentioned. All State & Zip Code.

Most HR Department's IT Recruitment is outsourced to an Agency who are given sole supplier status and operate on 3% margins.

I like to be paid weekly on time by an Agency.

Been there and thought about this idea three years plus ago like most contractors with an odd five minutes to spare and decided it is a no go.

Re: Hmm

On the front page:

"By recruiting direct, you can save around £5,000 on agency fees for either a six month contract or a permanent role. "

what, other than a site to introduce clients to contractors (or contractors to clients) could it possibly be?

tim

Re: Hmm

Why oh why oh why is everyone on this board presuming our site is designed to "introduce" clients and contractors, or that our site is some sort of job board or agency derivative. :rolleyes

I just don't get it.

Please, please, please tell me what it is about my site that advises you we are in any way related to the above.

What phrases are we using that give this impression?

Because until you start to understand what it is we do, we cannot have a sensible discussion.

Oh, and if there are hundreds of sites out there doing what we do, name them. So I can see the competition. The only competition to me are agencies, and it is them that I am trying to get rid of, if that is a problem to you then please let me know and I will focus on the permies and leave you to continue to enjoy the numerous benefits of working with agencies.

Viking in "spitting dummy out of pram" mode.

Re: Hmm

Viking:
I am sorry to admit that I agree with the majority of the comments regarding the quality of your site, basically it stinks mate.

but before you throw your teddy out of the pram....

Any business that *may* *possibly* increase my revenue and gives me other potential business leads is a good business. I wish you all the best with the venture, and if you need a decent .Net site give me a call.

ah, and btw, there are *loads* of sites out there that expect payment for introducing clients & contractors.

Hmm

Well, If we 'dont understand' maybe you need to give a clear explaination rather than waffle about research and business models. You are not making clear either here or on the site what the benfit of your service is. Oaksoft asks some sensible questions which would clarify what you are doing and you snub him!

Plenty of sites will publish PR fluff, and there is plenty of advertising available. It has to be said that any sales org needs to do lots of marketing to get of the ground, but I am confident that you have done the research and know better than anyone on here.

As a hint though, sites like this one only have ads from companies selling to contractors.

Response to Oaksoft

Oaksoft: I did put out quite a lengthy response to all the comments I had received because no-one seems to have understood what our business is, including you. For this reason it seemed pointless trying to answer individual questions which pertain to a business model which is not ours.

Also, I am still waiting for an answer to my original question, namely, where and how to advertise our service to contractors, as yet I have received a lot of advice about my site and my business, most of which is irrelevant as the business model is not yet fully understood.

And although I am disappointed with the general comments about the site, I am pleased that someone out there understood that the site is at present a prototype. It is the service behind the site which is important, not the site itself.

No matter how much market research you do, you always need to setup a prototype to fully understand the markets reaction to your product or service. We do have a flash enabled site in the wings, but we will not bring that out until we have fine tuned the business model and the services associated with it.

It's a shame you avoided my questions

Viking, I was genuinely interested in how you were going to answer my questions and disappointed that you chose not to do so.

It seems to me that your idea fails at the "so what" hurdle.
There is nothing genuinely new or exciting here.

In fact, what you propose is more expensive than that available elsewhere.

Why would you be able to filter CV's better than an agency?

GULP.de

I actually came here looking for some site based on this model (look, first posting). CVBuddies.com is in its first iteration though, judging by the graphics.

Viking - if you want to get CVs on board, you should spruce up that website and make it look slick. The very best reaction to your current design IMHO is going to be one of indifference.

Perhaps you should check out www.gulp.de/ which is a German operation working successfully (5 years old or more) along the same lines as your model. It is beginning to move into recruitment consultancy as well using its own database.