Reply to: "What rate shall I put you forward at?"

[mmarotta]

If you are professional about your contracting, you should know the going rates. Also, your own situation is yours. If you can be happy with £200 a day, and the job would have paid £225, where is the change in your life? You might as well agonize over the lotto numbers you did not play. More money is always better, of course, and better in your pocket than theirs, true enough, but in the long run, we all learn by doing.

Next time, bargain better.

And I agree with all of the better bargaining advice here so far. Myself, I am nonchalant and conversational on the phone. "If I said £45 per hour, would that be hard on your client?" Realize how that is phrased.

[moorfield]

itjobswatch has reasonably accurate market stats for my area so usually I have quoted the top of that bell(ish) curve and taken it from there.

Always at the back of my mind is the fact that I am competing against other specialists in my area (many of whom invariably I know/worked with before), cheaps bobs and consultancies staffing grads for the gig. So normally I'm happy to let that rate drift to the top of that bell(ish) curve - theoretically the market average.

Malvolio is spot on with the idea of starting from what you need to live on comfortably working 7 months/year as a minimum. In fact I would be quite happy if I could get myself into that routine for the next 5-10 years or so but I can't see it happening realistically.

[strawberrysmoothie]

Always a bit of a dance this one isn't it. I recommend you bone up on negotiating tactics before you begin, maybe write a crib sheet to have in front of you so you can counter his 'well I do have another contractor who ticks all the boxes and will work for less' with some of your own. Here is a couple to get you started.

1. What is the maximum your client is prepared to pay to get the right person?
2. What is the minimum commission you will take to place me?
3. How much of your commission will you cede to me for every renewal I secure?
4. I have another offer I am considering so you will have to move quick

and of course after the interview and you've been offered the job.

5. I am sorry, the job is much more involved than you described. I'll be needing another X a day for this kind of role.

I totally agree. A negotiation skills course and a cheat sheet of things to say to an agent is vital especially for newbie contractors.

I speak from experience it will get you out of a lot a trouble and even out the playing field.

A thing I always say to agents 'I don't know how to answer your question....because asking me about the rate at the this stage is like asking me to put an offer on a house without viewing it...what are you offering?

[Ardesco]

When I have been sifting through CV's to pick who to interview before I have interviewed people who were £25-£50 a day more than the budget (depending on the budget) to see what they are like. My thought process has been that you can always give them an offer at budget level if they are OK but not perfect, or if you can find somebody really special go back to the person with the budget and see if there is any wriggle room. If there is no wriggle room, again you can offer them a role at budget rate, they may well have been trying to talk their rate up and may well be happy with the max rate you can offer.

Basically I would suspect that going in over the odds will not automatically rule you out unless you're being silly about it (of course this depends upon the agents, some may cross you off the list before you get to the client).

Unfortunately my experience so far has been that the people who make the outlandish rate requests are normally blaggers with little to back up their demands, probably works well if they talk to a know nothing HR bod I guess...

[Mephisto]

Standard technique I tend to use is to give agent a rate higher than my previous rate.

That way, if my proposed rate is legit too high, gives me wiggle room to look magnanimous to agent by going in lower than usual whilst also getting an increase on previous rate. if it's acceptable, well jobs a good 'un.

^^This^^

Also would quite happily take a lower than current rate (within reason!) for the right role and as long as I knew it was at the Client's request, not skimming by the Agent. Not too sure how one would go about this though.

[Gordon Ice]

Just good business sense..

You've gotta remember that your desired result of this nonsensical conversation is an interview. Weed out the Agents blatantly fishing and then state something plausible and if possible sufficiently vague (i.e. a £range). Get through the interview (successfully), fully understand the gig, try and unearth the Client's budget, and if the £rate you orginally stated is too low it's time to pi** the Agent off by asking for more (citing a "better understanding of the role following the interview"). They'll hate you for doing it but now you have some real leverage - the Client wants you.

Always good to get a Client contact number during the interview so if you absolutely have to you can call them directly to apologise in person for being "unable to reach an acceptable rate with the Agent." Amazing how many times this becomes a "how much is the Agent offering vs. how much the Client is paying the Agent" discussion. And then you'll know if the Agent is trying to rip you off.

Simples.

[Wanderer]

How would you know...?

Because the purchase order tells the agency how much they were getting and how much the contractor was getting. Agency are on the PSL so I doubt that they would jeopardise this by trying to rip the contractor off behind our backs and they would have some serious grovelling to do it they got caught trying it on. The rate is negotiated between the client and the contractor in this case anyway, the agency just do what they are told.

Wouldn't it be nice if it always worked that way huh?

[monobrow]

To be fair, they don't always. I've worked for clients where we've needed someone and we just asked the agency to get us some CVs and get them to tell us what rate they wanted. Each one was considered on it's merits. Some cheaper but less able, some more able but more expensive.

Other times, we've said "OK get me someone in, the rate is X per day". If they can get someone good at under that rate then that's great. The agency were on a fixed margin though so they couldn't go ripping contractors off.

Hmmmmm

I've been in management/senior management for 13 years or so. I've never ever engaged an agency without an idea of the rate i'm willing to pay (or at least range). And nor have I have had a conversation with any agency who hasn't asked for a rate or a range.

we'll have to disagree on that one.

The only possible scenario is if we are pricing up a bit of work with a skill where we have zero idea of what the range may be and then we would ask the agency, but I can't see any scenario where we would say "just get us some CV's" and we'll take it from there - surely a complete waste of everyones time and money?

WAIT, did you just launch that new police web site?

[pastalista]

Government procurement

I believe the original question stated that all of the roles were public sector. I run procurement for a public sector organisation, amongst other things, and we use framework agreements (as do almost all public sector bodies) and the markup is defined as part of that process so scalping money from a contractor isn't acceptable and is easily discovered.

It is very, very rare in my experience for a public sector body not to have a predetermined rate for a role. Often it is quoted in ranges by the client so the agency doesn't state the rate range as it knows that most contractors will go for the top end or close to it. This is where the "the client hasn't specified a rate" comes from. They want to be able to send CVs in at a competitive rate for the client.

What they don't realise is that public sector recruitment tends not to work like that. Candidates are selected for interview based solely on their skills and ability to do the role in question, so long as their rate is in the right range. Clearly though if it comes down to choosing between two equally skilled candidates and one is cheaper than the other then the cheaper one will prevail, so there is some sense in what the agencies do.

As a contractor of 30 years standing myself, I have a rate below which I will not go. If the information is available about the job then I base my rate request on that information. If there isn't much information (and again, this is unusual in public sector as we have to publish job descriptions to use the frameworks) then I pitch according to title. Programme Manager is minimum £650 per day outside London, £800 per day inside and so on.

Sure I price myself out of some jobs but I really don't want to work for a client who is trying to get my skills on the cheap. I'll only come to resent it eventually.

It's all very personal but I have found this to be effective and my rate has generally risen evenly over the last 10 - 15 years.

Pastalista

[DS23]

...5. I am sorry, the job is much more involved than you described. I'll be needing another X a day for this kind of role...

exactly. two can play the game. i once replied to the the question of "what rate should i put you forward at?" with an amount 150 below my usual base rate. the agent was unaware but i knew the details of the role that he had been vague about and i really wanted to secure an interview. actually, i went one further and offered a free days consultancy. the bait got me the face-to-face and a job offer came through the following day. oh, i said that's not the rate. the rate is 150 more than that to much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the agent. shortly after that the end client phoned me directly and asked why the sudden rate rise. i said i had originally quoted a low rate based upon a different job criteria. offer was upated to desired amount. bingo handjob donuts.

[singhr]

Always a bit of a dance this one isn't it. I recommend you bone up on negotiating tactics before you begin, maybe write a crib sheet to have in front of you so you can counter his 'well I do have another contractor who ticks all the boxes and will work for less' with some of your own. Here is a couple to get you started.

1. What is the maximum your client is prepared to pay to get the right person?
2. What is the minimum commission you will take to place me?
3. How much of your commission will you cede to me for every renewal I secure?
4. I have another offer I am considering so you will have to move quick

and of course after the interview and you've been offered the job.

5. I am sorry, the job is much more involved than you described. I'll be needing another X a day for this kind of role.

[filthy1980]

this can work 2 ways

i was called about a position, agent asked what i was looking for, i gave him my current day rate as a marker his reply "i can get you more then that" got me day rate + £70 p/d, they were still making 25% on the client though

current client was looking for more ppl to join the team, i recommended a former manager to the agency, he was more expensive then me though (+ £50 p/d) & over qualified for the job but agent didn't even submit his CV to the client

same agent in both cases

[NotAllThere]

...The problem with "current + £50" is you price yourself out of the market very quickly. If you want to go that route, current +15% is probably more realistic....

Not if your rate is £350 a day or more.

[malvolio]

The agency were on a fixed margin though so they couldn't go ripping contractors off.

How would you know...?

[Wanderer]

Basically, they are looking to skim the rate, they KNOW EXACTLY what the client is paying, if its 600 and you say 400, they are laughing.

To be fair, they don't always. I've worked for clients where we've needed someone and we just asked the agency to get us some CVs and get them to tell us what rate they wanted. Each one was considered on it's merits. Some cheaper but less able, some more able but more expensive.

Other times, we've said "OK get me someone in, the rate is X per day". If they can get someone good at under that rate then that's great. The agency were on a fixed margin though so they couldn't go ripping contractors off.