Warning about a recruitment agency

JigglyMcJabs

Hey, I won't name names in case it breaks a rule. I saw a job ad for a data analyst contract role that was right up my street, with a good day rate. I sent on my cv and got a call back from a recruiter.

Immediately, the recruiter started going through a pre-prepared list of questions, such as "How many people work in your current team", "what's your managers name" and other thinly veiled information gathering questions to line them up for a cold call to my manager to offer recruitment services.

I didn't answer and tried a few questions of my own about the advertised role, from what the recruiter was saying, it was pretty obvious that there was no real roles going.

If you see ads for a contract data analyst position, from a recruitment company beginning with "R". Be careful.

evolving_doors

RecruitymacRecruitface?

JigglyMcJabs

evolving_doors wrote: »

RecruitymacRecruitface?

Huh?

aaakev

JigglyMcJabs wrote: »

Huh?

Boatymcboatface

14ned

Yeah, now the bubble is inflating again I'm seeing much more of the shady practices that we'd been thankfully free of for a few years.

Speaking of which, a recruiter from a well known agency cold called me a few weeks ago and tried to persuade me to break my contract with Verizon for €600/day at a large bank who is in desperate need for senior C++ devs due to the Brexit exodus.

Now, at that day rate, I was tempted. Very tempted. But I want to return to remote from Mallow ASAP in 2019. I don't want to be in Dublin for a second longer than is avoidable. And besides, Ireland is a small world, breaking contracts is bad for you long run.

Still, a fair cheek of a recruiter trying to shaft other agencies like that. I expect it'll only get worse.

Niall

rgodard80a

JigglyMcJabs wrote: »

If you see ads for a contract data analyst position, from a recruitment company beginning with "R". Be careful.

Yeah, it's hard to reper their reputation if it's the same crowd.

I was job hunting with them once, so always trying to avoid answering those obvious phone calls in the open plan office that everyone knows.

Anyway, a week later I get a message from from reception that they had left a message for me to ring them back.

Turns out it wasn't about my job hunting but was to aggressively cold call me to tout their services. But certainly looked like I was job hunting at a sensitive time... and they should've avoided mixing the two applicants and prospects lists up.

I told them to delete my details and never contact me again.

14ned

rgodard80a wrote: »

Yeah, it's hard to reper their reputation if it's the same crowd.

Nice!

I never give out my phone number. Ever. My CV has a temporary email address they can contact me with whilst I am looking for work. As soon as I am placed, the temporary email address gets killed, then they plague me on LinkedIn with irrelevant spam instead.

That said, some of the LinkedIn approaches recently actually demonstrated they had read my profile. I almost always reply to them.

Niall

JigglyMcJabs

rgodard80a wrote: »

Yeah, it's hard to reper their reputation if it's the same crowd.

I was job hunting with them once, so always trying to avoid answering those obvious phone calls in the open plan office that everyone knows.

Anyway, a week later I get a message from from reception that they had left a message for me to ring them back.

Turns out it wasn't about my job hunting but was to aggressively cold call me to tout their services. But certainly looked like I was job hunting at a sensitive time... and they should've avoided mixing the two applicants and prospects lists up.

I told them to delete my details and never contact me again.

Yup, same crowd!

moycullen14

Ah God be with the days of shady agent practices! Twas ever thus.

One of my favourites was an agent negotiating a rate rise for my services and then denying that it happened when I looked for an increase. Went to the client, they confirmed the increase so interesting conversation ensued. What I couldn't understand was how he thought I wasn't going to find out.

It transpires that he was at this all the time and, guess what, generally the contractor never followed up.

Was talking to a friend recently who has been contracting with the same company for the last 4 years. The agent is still there getting his hundred quid plus a day for a bit of time-sheet filling-in and cash flow management. Funny thing others on site have negotiated the agent away but this guy just refuses to do this.

Agents exist for a number of reasons: greed and aggression on their part, useless HR and recruiting practices but mainly they exist because of huge inertia and commercial cluelessness on the part of contractors. There is no end of crap that we will put up with.

This is Ireland - it's a small place, we are connected to each other by 2 or 3 degrees of freedom. Why we need agents is beyond me.

14ned

moycullen14 wrote: »

One of my favourites was an agent negotiating a rate rise for my services and then denying that it happened when I looked for an increase. Went to the client, they confirmed the increase so interesting conversation ensued. What I couldn't understand was how he thought I wasn't going to find out.

Last year in that awful market for C++ folk in Ireland, I had something slightly better than that, but only just: the agency pushing down the rate despite that the client had not. They knew we were desperate, so they increased their margin. The day rate dropped by 10% just before contract signing. What else could we do? Nothing. It was a buyer's market.

Was talking to a friend recently who has been contracting with the same company for the last 4 years. The agent is still there getting his hundred quid plus a day for a bit of time-sheet filling-in and cash flow management. Funny thing others on site have negotiated the agent away but this guy just refuses to do this.

Agencies can be surprisingly recalcitrant though. In my opinion, after a year the agency has earned their dues for placing someone. They should be happy to give up most of their margin if the contract gets extended - they did no extra work for it, and it's extra income they didn't expect.

Yet, certainly you'll see them not see it that way here in Ireland. I've seen agencies just refuse outright to budge. Then you lose me, then the client is furious. Why you'd engage in such bad business I don't know.

This is Ireland - it's a small place, we are connected to each other by 2 or 3 degrees of freedom. Why we need agents is beyond me.

Oh, it's because HR says so. I've often wondered at what kind of brown envelopes get passed from agencies to individuals in HR to make it so.

But also, individual engineers in Ireland don't seem to take the initiative to post a role to an Reddit subgroup or Hacker News or StackOverflow Jobs or any of the newer recruitment methods i.e. straight to the enthusiasts in a technology. I've noticed startups are far more likely to do so. Big multinationals, almost never.

Niall

forgottenhills

moycullen14 wrote: »

This is Ireland - it's a small place, we are connected to each other by 2 or 3 degrees of freedom. Why we need agents is beyond me.

Experienced contractors understand the 2 main reasons why good agency recruiters can be useful:

1. Good agents will have trusted relationships with hiring managers and sometimes get exclusive roles from these. They will then go directly to contractors that they have used in the past and who have delivered well. Hence the contractor will be getting an exclusive opportunity that may never be openly advertised.

2. Payment. Even bad agencies should be secure and timely payers. Getting paid directly by clients can be a time consuming pain in the a** with all sorts of delays due to changes or errors on issued POs, endless changes in payment systems and procedures and within A/P departments, or simply bad payment policies. A great deal of agency time that contractors are unaware of is often spent chasing late/missing payments from clients.

14ned

forgottenhills wrote: »

Experienced contractors understand the 2 main reasons why good agency recruiters can be useful:

1. Good agents will have trusted relationships with hiring managers and sometimes get exclusive roles from these. They will then go directly to contractors that they have used in the past and who have delivered well. Hence the contractor will be getting an exclusive opportunity that may never be openly advertised.

In some parts of the US and London, I'd agree. They've got deep enough markets that some recruiters might be able to line up contractors based on their availability for specialist roles.

In Ireland, with its very shallow all-hot/all-cold market, and as mainly a low cost offshoring centre, no. Contractors are never available when clients want them because the market is hot, or the contracting market has no open roles at all because it's cold. Last year there were like zero C++ contracts anywhere in Ireland for over six months. This year I've got recruiters kicking down my door telling me to break my current contract, but I'm not available until January. The kind of contracts which go here are legacy code base support or medical devices. Bottom rung work. A trained monkey could do them, so substitutability is very high i.e. any warm body will do. So no incentive to line up preferred contractors based on their availability, just pick whomever is available now.

forgottenhills wrote: »

2. Payment. Even bad agencies should be secure and timely payers. Getting paid directly by clients can be a time consuming pain in the a** with all sorts of delays due to changes or errors on issued POs, endless changes in payment systems and procedures and within A/P departments, or simply bad payment policies. A great deal of agency time that contractors are unaware of is often spent chasing late/missing payments from clients.

I somehow doubt you've ever contracted.

If the agency doesn't get paid, the contractor doesn't get paid. I've never seen it any other way in a decade of contracting. I've had to go on strike twice now in my contracting career because agencies weren't paying me as they were contractually obligated to do. I've worked up to two months in contracts before with zero pay because the agency had cocked up. Forget trying to argue that the contract terms say they're on the hook. No point. Better to light a fire under the client by striking, it's the only way to force the issue because the agency sure does nothing until you down tools and get the client upset.

I don't begrudge agencies getting their margin for placing a 12 month contract. It's painful placing somebody. But I have zero empathy for their supposed overhead and running costs once somebody is placed. I particularly take issue with the clauses which prevent cutting out the agency if the contract is renewed, it's a pure money grab. The agency does nothing to earn that extra margin. And so many contracts have been ended earlier than would have been otherwise for me, precisely because of the agency being d*icks.

I long await the day that US-style fixed fee placement comes in here, so the agency's sole purpose is to find the talent, they get a fixed fee, and the contractor contracts directly with the client, no agency in between to mess things up or get in the way of the contractor-client relationship by trying to extract even more rents.

Niall

forgottenhills

14ned wrote: »

I somehow doubt you've ever contracted.

If the agency doesn't get paid, the contractor doesn't get paid. I've never seen it any other way in a decade of contracting. I've had to go on strike twice now in my contracting career because agencies weren't paying me as they were contractually obligated to do. I've worked up to two months in contracts before with zero pay because the agency had cocked up. Forget trying to argue that the contract terms say they're on the hook. No point. Better to light a fire under the client by striking, it's the only way to force the issue because the agency sure does nothing until you down tools and get the client upset.


Niall

Hi Niall I can see that you have have had a good deal of contractor experience but other people have had different experience, even as contractors.

From my own point of view I have indeed been a contract developer but also a line manager (contract and permanent) and also account manager for an IT services firm where we recruited for clients so effectively I have also worked for an agency. So I have worked on all sides of the table and can see the big picture on this whole area.

I am making a distinction between a recruitment agency and an umbrella/accounting services firm here as I do understand that most of the umbrellas operate on a "pay when paid" basis.

However when I was a contractor myself (set up as a proper limited company) and working through agencies (not umbrellas), or when I was on the agency side, I always received payment within 2 weeks or so of submitting a timesheet and invoice. And on the agency side we always made payment to contractors on that basis. And that was always before we received payment from clients. In fact we often paid contractors even before we had received POs from the end client. let alone payment. It is not uncommon for agencies or IT services companies to be waiting up to 6 months for payment from clients on occasion. Basically the approval and signoff process can be delayed for ages in end clients or they simply take an aggressive payment policy with agencies or suppliers. Not all are like that of course and some are timely payers.

I would be disappointed to hear that contractors dealing with agencies don't have guaranteed payment within 2-3 weeks of invoice. Agency margin is used to cover their costs of finance. I would suggest that contractors simply don't engage with agencies who don't pay or a prompt or predictable way.

Now I am talking about scenarios involving blue chip/large end clients. I have never dealt with start-ups or companies where there may be a risk of bankruptcy/closure. Perhaps in those cases agencies may insist on operating on pay when paid basis and they might be right to do so.

14ned wrote: »

I don't begrudge agencies getting their margin for placing a 12 month contract. It's painful placing somebody. But I have zero empathy for their supposed overhead and running costs once somebody is placed. I particularly take issue with the clauses which prevent cutting out the agency if the contract is renewed, it's a pure money grab. The agency does nothing to earn that extra margin. And so many contracts have been ended earlier than would have been otherwise for me, precisely because of the agency being d*icks.

I long await the day that US-style fixed fee placement comes in here, so the agency's sole purpose is to find the talent, they get a fixed fee, and the contractor contracts directly with the client, no agency in between to mess things up or get in the way of the contractor-client relationship by trying to extract even more rents.

Niall

If you look at the picture from the end client point of view agencies do more than find talent. Here are a few important things they do that most contractors are probably not aware of:

- provide a degree of separation. Many companies will never take on a contractor directly as they are paranoid about contractors earning employee status.

- simple issue of time. Line managers or HR departments simply may not have enough time to carry out recruitment which is very time consuming and often expensive, especially when looking for a precise set of skills and experience.

- payment providers. As stated hiring managers are well aware that companies have issues and delays with direct payments to suppliers that most contractors would balk at so one function of an agency should be to provide a smooth system of payment to the contractor and solve that problem.

- market intelligence. Line managers often use agencies to find out what is going on in the market as they can only see a small subset of this themselves whereas the agency will have a wider view.

For these and other reasons I could list I am afraid that you are being unrealistic and somewhat contractor-centric in looking for the demise of agencies. Remember that agencies are there to work for the end client, not for the contractor (although it can turn into a mutually beneficial arrangement between a good contractor and a good agency).

John_Mc

I've never had any issues getting paid by agencies. They might have made a mistake once or twice but once told about it they sent out a same day payment and everything is resolved.

I have had serious issues getting paid direct from clients though. It's a serious pain and can be very stressful when they don't pay you for whatever reason.

moycullen14

forgottenhills wrote: »

Hi Niall I can see that you have have had a good deal of contractor experience but other people have had different experience, even as contractors.

From my own point of view I have indeed been a contract developer but also a line manager (contract and permanent) and also account manager for an IT services firm where we recruited for clients so effectively I have also worked for an agency. So I have worked on all sides of the table and can see the big picture on this whole area.

I am making a distinction between a recruitment agency and an umbrella/accounting services firm here as I do understand that most of the umbrellas operate on a "pay when paid" basis.

However when I was a contractor myself (set up as a proper limited company) and working through agencies (not umbrellas), or when I was on the agency side, I always received payment within 2 weeks or so of submitting a timesheet and invoice. And on the agency side we always made payment to contractors on that basis. And that was always before we received payment from clients. In fact we often paid contractors even before we had received POs from the end client. let alone payment. It is not uncommon for agencies or IT services companies to be waiting up to 6 months for payment from clients on occasion. Basically the approval and signoff process can be delayed for ages in end clients or they simply take an aggressive payment policy with agencies or suppliers. Not all are like that of course and some are timely payers.

I would be disappointed to hear that contractors dealing with agencies don't have guaranteed payment within 2-3 weeks of invoice. Agency margin is used to cover their costs of finance. I would suggest that contractors simply don't engage with agencies who don't pay or a prompt or predictable way.

Now I am talking about scenarios involving blue chip/large end clients. I have never dealt with start-ups or companies where there may be a risk of bankruptcy/closure. Perhaps in those cases agencies may insist on operating on pay when paid basis and they might be right to do so.



If you look at the picture from the end client point of view agencies do more than find talent. Here are a few important things they do that most contractors are probably not aware of:

- provide a degree of separation. Many companies will never take on a contractor directly as they are paranoid about contractors earning employee status.

- simple issue of time. Line managers or HR departments simply may not have enough time to carry out recruitment which is very time consuming and often expensive, especially when looking for a precise set of skills and experience.

- payment providers. As stated hiring managers are well aware that companies have issues and delays with direct payments to suppliers that most contractors would balk at so one function of an agency should be to provide a smooth system of payment to the contractor and solve that problem.

- market intelligence. Line managers often use agencies to find out what is going on in the market as they can only see a small subset of this themselves whereas the agency will have a wider view.

For these and other reasons I could list I am afraid that you are being unrealistic and somewhat contractor-centric in looking for the demise of agencies. Remember that agencies are there to work for the end client, not for the contractor (although it can turn into a mutually beneficial arrangement between a good contractor and a good agency).

Oh Goody, an agency bashing thread.

I would take issue with a lot of what you say above. It's standard guff agencies use to justify their existence.

degree of separation: My contract for the provision of service is with the client, not the agent - my contact with the agent is irrelevant to my employment status. The whole issue of disguised employment (and it's rife, revenue turning a blind eye - so far) is not affected by the presence or absence of an agent. IR35 in the UK showed that. I know that some companies are claiming tax credits for contractors hired via separate companies. Dodgy, I would have thought. Seems to me that the revenue in Ireland will do nothing to upset the FDI 'apple-tart'

time: makes you wonder what exactly HR department in IT companies actually do if they have no time (really, they have no expertise) for recruitment. Same for line managers. Anyone relying on agents to assess quality of IT hires is a .... (words fail me)

market-intelligence: Hmm, again agents see hiring trends, not market trends.

payments: Must say I have never had a problem with agency payments- always been prompt. Never had much problem with direct client payments either albeit they are usually delayed. What I would say is that if I did have a problem, I'd much sooner it was with the client, not the agent.

the agent is paid by the client, not the contractor: This one really irritates me. The contractor is the product in this scenario. However whilst the client pays the contractor, he's doing it with the contractor's money.

Going through an agent rather than direct costs the contractor money (the agent margin). So in a very real sense the contractor is paying the agent.

I've had a few agent-found gigs where the client paid a fixed fee, rather than an ongoing %, and dealt with me direct. Worked fine and it seems fair. Agent must have been happy too.

I'm not against agents at all. They do provide a useful clearing function. What I am against is their attempts at market manipulation and their business structure that lead to shady practices. What I really object to is the cant and bullsh*t they come up with to justify their carry-on.

14ned

forgottenhills wrote: »

I am making a distinction between a recruitment agency and an umbrella/accounting services firm here as I do understand that most of the umbrellas operate on a "pay when paid" basis.

I've always had my own limited company since the beginning. Of total work in the past decade, a bit over a half has been direct with clients, a bit less than half has been via an agency.

forgottenhills wrote: »

However when I was a contractor myself (set up as a proper limited company) and working through agencies (not umbrellas), or when I was on the agency side, I always received payment within 2 weeks or so of submitting a timesheet and invoice. And on the agency side we always made payment to contractors on that basis. And that was always before we received payment from clients. In fact we often paid contractors even before we had received POs from the end client. let alone payment. It is not uncommon for agencies or IT services companies to be waiting up to 6 months for payment from clients on occasion. Basically the approval and signoff process can be delayed for ages in end clients or they simply take an aggressive payment policy with agencies or suppliers. Not all are like that of course and some are timely payers.

And perhaps that was the case for you personally. And I'm glad that was the case, as I am for anyone else who have a trouble free experience.

However, I am a professional contractor who knows a lot of other professional contractors, as I sit on standards committees full of professional contractors. I can tell you straight out that I have the most positive opinion of agencies of anyone I know. Particularly in Ireland, which is a bit of a backwater for the big agencies, the sheer greed, the lack of professionalism, and incompetency never fails to impress. I can't speak for all Irish contractors, but I would vastly prefer if the agency went away after placement. They consistently and actively interfere with and disrupt the contractor-client relationship for the worse.

Agencies here are particularly prone to treating contractor like children and utterly disposable and replaceable. I'm in business for myself. I'm a world expert in my field with a lot of happy customers I worked directly for behind me. I don't need to be dictated to by an agency, forced to sign contracts which make me wholly liable for any cock up by the agency like on GDPR, deliberately rate dropped after interviews have completed just before contract signing and told I can take it or leave it because they have twenty other fellows waiting to go. I then have to put up with payments not arriving for weeks on end, incorrect payments arriving missing money or with the UK not Irish VAT calculated, contract extensions with the agency trying to hike their rate without telling me (do they really think I don't have a good relationship with my line manager after a 12 month contract?) and a never ending load of crap.

And these aren't small agencies. These are amongst the biggest agencies in Ireland. Quite frankly, they are badly managed and actively damage the Irish IT sector.

I have a lot of time for certain individual recruiters. There is some gold in the muck. But as an industry, by god it's mediocre.

I would be disappointed to hear that contractors dealing with agencies don't have guaranteed payment within 2-3 weeks of invoice. Agency margin is used to cover their costs of finance. I would suggest that contractors simply don't engage with agencies who don't pay or a prompt or predictable way.

The contractor never gets to choose the agency. The client's HR department does. We are in a particularly weak negotiating position here in Ireland due to how shallow the market is. If one were in London, one could actively blacklist certain agencies. Here, given the sparsity of opportunity, you take what you can get and play the hand you're dealt.

Now I am talking about scenarios involving blue chip/large end clients. I have never dealt with start-ups or companies where there may be a risk of bankruptcy/closure. Perhaps in those cases agencies may insist on operating on pay when paid basis and they might be right to do so.

I've contracted direct with many startups. They rarely lie about their lack of financing, and are very understanding when you down tools due to not getting paid. Though I've lost some money with some of them in the past, it's never been acrimonious. We both knew what the business relationship was, and I was glad to do useful work, unlike the donkey and drudge work one does at big blue chips.

No by far the biggest problems are with big multinationals. I've never had a problem with the client staff I was working with, if anything they are as astonished at the incompetence as I have been, and have done everything they could do to get their HR departments to put pressure on the agency to sort themselves out. When I showed my current contract wording to some of the employees at my current client, they were as aghast as I was. It literally makes me liable for anything which goes wrong, including anything not my fault or connected to me. I'd never have signed such a contract except last year it was the only game in town, and I have young children to support. Bad year.

If you look at the picture from the end client point of view agencies do more than find talent. Here are a few important things they do that most contractors are probably not aware of:

- provide a degree of separation. Many companies will never take on a contractor directly as they are paranoid about contractors earning employee status.

Yet multinationals have contracted me direct on numerous occasions. Sorry, I don't buy this. Their Legal departments know full well what they are doing.

- simple issue of time. Line managers or HR departments simply may not have enough time to carry out recruitment which is very time consuming and often expensive, especially when looking for a precise set of skills and experience.

I agree there is an amazing amount of ignorance as to where go solicit new staff. There is also a prevailing notion, I have found, that "it's not their job" to go find staff. Then when agencies and HR produce a never ending stream of unsuitable candidates and everybody wastes days interviewing them, I usually point them at the places on the internet where specialists hang out. Especially if they're willing to allow remote, the quality of talent you can find for €120k/year gross is amazing. Standards committee members, published authors of books in their technical fields, people who used to work with Dennis Richie during Plan 9. That kind of level. I've brought several into where I was working in the past. Everybody was amazed with the calibre.

In the end, recruiters are looking in the wrong places and using the wrong tools and wrong approach (e.g. LinkedIn). These people are easy to find if you know where to look, and do not approach them using spam. They really hate spam. Just demonstrate you have a semblance of having parsed their work history, and a clue about if they'd be suited.

- payment providers. As stated hiring managers are well aware that companies have issues and delays with direct payments to suppliers that most contractors would balk at so one function of an agency should be to provide a smooth system of payment to the contractor and solve that problem.

Sure, I've had payment problems with some of my direct contracts. Sometimes an invoice wouldn't get paid on time, or wasn't authorised fully, and I've had to chase it.

But that's business, and business in any form has that. Especially as agencies don't pay until they get paid in my experience, I think I'd prefer to chase my own payments and keep the agency commission thank you.

- market intelligence. Line managers often use agencies to find out what is going on in the market as they can only see a small subset of this themselves whereas the agency will have a wider view.

On this point only I agree. People not regularly facing the market are clueless as to what prevailing rates etc are.

Now they could come onto this forum here on boards.ie and ask, but you're right that they don't seem to. Equally I would say that recruitment agencies often tell multinationals that people with such and such a specialist skill aren't available in Ireland. A total load of crap. Recruitment agencies have no idea how deep the talent pool is here in Ireland. The talent just doesn't want to live in Dublin, that's all. If you can give them that, you can source some superb people.

Recruitment agencies meanwhile just spam LinkedIn and Indeed.ie and if they don't get hits to their terribly worded and inaccurate job description, they throw their hands up and say that such talent doesn't exist here in Ireland. So there's that, as well.

For these and other reasons I could list I am afraid that you are being unrealistic and somewhat contractor-centric in looking for the demise of agencies. Remember that agencies are there to work for the end client, not for the contractor (although it can turn into a mutually beneficial arrangement between a good contractor and a good agency).

I also know a ton of contractors in the US where the kind of incompetence we regularly see here would mean death over there. They're moving to a finder's fee payment model for high end talent, and that's finder's fee is being relentless competed downwards, perhaps to unsustainably low levels actually (contractors do actually worry about that, some keep preferred specialist recruiters on a retainer). Most of those I know couldn't imagine an agency being between them and their client, that's so last decade. That's what temporary workers like cleaners do. Not high end specialists working short term very niche contracts.

So I suspect their time is coming. Not this decade. Probably next decade. We tend to lag the US by a tech boom-bust cycle, and the current tech bubble is likely going to pop again soon.

Niall

14ned

moycullen14 wrote: »

the agent is paid by the client, not the contractor: This one really irritates me. The contractor is the product in this scenario. However whilst the client pays the contractor, he's doing it with the contractor's money.

Going through an agent rather than direct costs the contractor money (the agent margin). So in a very real sense the contractor is paying the agent.

It's supposed to be that you work for the agency, the agency contracts you out. So the payment they get is between them and their client. If they choose to base it on what the agency pays you, that's between them. None of your business.

I know a lots of contractors see the agency margin as theft of their income. But I never have. I expect the money I signed the contract on. What happens behind the scenes is none of my business, except when it impacts me.

I do however strongly feel that the agency must not expect the same margin for a contract extension. The fact they do here in Ireland I just don't understand. I've lost a contract renewal before due to their intransigence to give me some of their margin. They literally refused extra income for no extra work on their part. They made their client furious at having to train in a replacement contractor for no good reason other than sheer greed and spite.

No way to run a business.

Niall

moycullen14

14ned wrote: »

It's supposed to be that you work for the agency, the agency contracts you out. So the payment they get is between them and their client. If they choose to base it on what the agency pays you, that's between them. None of your business.

I know a lots of contractors see the agency margin as theft of their income. But I never have. I expect the money I signed the contract on. What happens behind the scenes is none of my business, except when it impacts me.

I do however strongly feel that the agency must not expect the same margin for a contract extension. The fact they do here in Ireland I just don't understand. I've lost a contract renewal before due to their intransigence to give me some of their margin. They literally refused extra income for no extra work on their part. They made their client furious at having to train in a replacement contractor for no good reason other than sheer greed and spite.

No way to run a business.

Niall

Theft is putting a bit strong. Saying that you were 'happy' with the rate agreed with the agent so you should just lump it is a bit disingenuous. For a start, you may not have much wriggle room ion rate, especially in a buyer's market. Also, if you are getting $300 a day and the guy next to you gets $400 for exactly the same work, experience, blah blah - the only difference is you're with an agent, he's not - then it's very understandable that you'd be hacked off.

You say above that what happens behind the scenes is none of your business yet you have left contracts because you couldn't negotiate a commission reduction. Of course it matters and is your business. Money always is.

Agents, like the poor, will always be with us.

14ned

moycullen14 wrote: »

Theft is putting a bit strong.

It's not an uncommon opinion in our community though. Over on https://www.contractoruk.com/ forums they're definitely leaning towards the "agencies thieve" viewpoint. They're pretty right wing over there though, bit too much for me anyway.

Saying that you were 'happy' with the rate agreed with the agent so you should just lump it is a bit disingenuous. For a start, you may not have much wriggle room ion rate, especially in a buyer's market.

Definitely agreed. Irish agencies seem to feel it's a take it or leave it on day rate. And how impertinent and ungrateful a contractor is to even raise the topic as a lowly temp worker.

Also, if you are getting $300 a day and the guy next to you gets $400 for exactly the same work, experience, blah blah - the only difference is you're with an agent, he's not - then it's very understandable that you'd be hacked off.

I'm much less bothered about that. Perhaps it's the people I hang around with. You've got engineers pulling a half million plus working alongside people at the 100k mark at the same employer, both on standards committees, with the lesser paid person being arguably more accomplished, more experience.

And that's between you and your employer in the end. If you're not earning what you feel is due you, do something about it. Otherwise relax. There is more wealth in life than money income.

You say above that what happens behind the scenes is none of your business yet you have left contracts because you couldn't negotiate a commission reduction. Of course it matters and is your business. Money always is.

I did condition that statement with "until it affects me". Renewals indicate I have done a good job and the client is delighted and wants more. Renewals mean not training in a new replacement, wasting three months of time doing so. Renewals should be such a slam dunk for an agency. Literally free money, and the client loves them.

In the end, if agencies treat contractors as disposable and substitutable children, then they reap what they sow. Sure, at the bottom end some contractors are the lowest of low paid labour. But they may be high end in a few years time, and tarring the entire profession with the same brush and applying a one size fits all mollycoddling policy is not good business in the long term. You just p*ss off everybody.

And it's not like competition overseas can't compete here in Ireland from abroad, if recruitment here doesn't become seriously more competitive than they are. I certainly think Ireland is long overdue seeing a US-style boutique recruitment entering here, a one or two man shop where the recruiters have a deep knowledge of technology, and place high end specialists into very niche roles. It would be a big help to restore Ireland to not being a low cost offshoring centre, get back some real R&D here, not make work stuff done for the tax credits.

Niall

srsly78

forgottenhills wrote: »

Experienced contractors understand the 2 main reasons why good agency recruiters can be useful:

1. Good agents will have trusted relationships with hiring managers and sometimes get exclusive roles from these. They will then go directly to contractors that they have used in the past and who have delivered well. Hence the contractor will be getting an exclusive opportunity that may never be openly advertised.

2. Payment. Even bad agencies should be secure and timely payers. Getting paid directly by clients can be a time consuming pain in the a** with all sorts of delays due to changes or errors on issued POs, endless changes in payment systems and procedures and within A/P departments, or simply bad payment policies. A great deal of agency time that contractors are unaware of is often spent chasing late/missing payments from clients.

Spot the recruitment agent.

When a contractor refuses to deal with agencies they get better paid and have less hassle to deal with.

edit: Also am employed directly as consultant by multinational - recruiters always lie!