Business Analysts with insurance or retail experience

[BentheBA]

All

Out of curiosity, what do other BA managers think of the agencies? Good experiences or bad experiences? I have found they don't really understand the BA role.

Im currently working as a contract BA in Yorkshire but have worked both sides of the fence. From my experience agencies serve one main purpose and thats to filter CVs, some are good at it and others are hopeless. Agents trawl job boards, find Cvs, contact contractors for a brief discussion, try and tick the clients requirements and then forward some CVs on. Thats it. Some take the time to understand what the client wants but again some clients dont really know what a BA is. Ive experienced companies who uses BA's as "project manager assistants", software designers, process analysts, testers, data analysts. In other companies these roles would be a full time job title not a "Business Analyst" role. So with agencies playing a numbers game and clients with different views, hiring good BAs is hard.

In a lot of cases the HR departments will ONLY go through a preferred suppliers list of agencies which forces you to recruit via agents so many managers have no choice which is even more frustrating. This also makes it hard for contractors to go direct as even when a manager finds someone the contractor is then forced to go through an agent.

I guess in defence of agencies if you need to recruit many BAs then an agency would lower the cost of admin i.e. multiple contracts, multiple billing, security checks etc etc

I have known agents not to forward CVs where the contractor wants a certain rate in the hope that the client company will accept other Cvs on a lower rate which invariably will be lower quality, this has happened to me with the agent admitting it following the client rejecting the initial set of lower rate Cvs they had been sent, I ended up with that particular contract on the higher rate.

But for 1 or 2 contractors it always has to be cheaper for a client to go direct as the client is always paying more for a contractor than the agent is paying the contractor.

[neel9821]

All

I'm new to this site, but have read some of the posts and seems to be a great place for insight into contracting.

I need some help, I have tried to recruit for 2 contract Business Analyst roles with little luck via agencies.

One will be based north near to Leeds and the other will be based in the West Midlands.

I can provide further details to anyone that is interested. Can you PM me with your email addy as don't think I will be able to PM you back as my account probably doesn't have privileges to do just yet.

Thanks in advance...

Out of curiosity, what do other BA managers think of the agencies? Good experiences or bad experiences? I have found they don't really understand the BA role.

Please could you PM me your email and then we can talk about the role. I am interested in one that is based in West Midlands

[SueEllen]

Out of curiosity, what do other BA managers think of the agencies? Good experiences or bad experiences? I have found they don't really understand the BA role.

The vast majority of agencies don't understand any role.

They are mostly glorified sales people.

There are a few exceptions out there but they tend to be IT folk who have ended up in recruitment for one reason or another.

[busanalyst]

All

I'm new to this site, but have read some of the posts and seems to be a great place for insight into contracting.

I need some help, I have tried to recruit for 2 contract Business Analyst roles with little luck via agencies.

One will be based north near to Leeds and the other will be based in the West Midlands.

I can provide further details to anyone that is interested. Can you PM me with your email addy as don't think I will be able to PM you back as my account probably doesn't have privileges to do just yet.

Thanks in advance...

Out of curiosity, what do other BA managers think of the agencies? Good experiences or bad experiences? I have found they don't really understand the BA role.