A ray of light?

Published 28 November 09 12:57 PM | MartinBell

 

I was interested to read Richard Barden’s appraisal of the SQL Server market this week on SQL-Server-Performance.com. This confirmed by own findings from talking to people at SQLBits, in that the market is noticeably better than this time last year. This will come as a welcome relief to anyone who has had a hard year finding employment. Hopefully his predictions will turn out to be correct.

Unfortunately I have also heard that some unpalatable practices being employed by some agencies; such as using the recession as an excuse to increase their margins and in some cases over 30% going to the agency.

Agencies may have their part to play in the contractor market, but it seems to me that there is a lack of accountability and accreditation for someone who is a position of trust by both contractor and client.

The standard of service an agency provides to a client can vary considerably. Good agencies will only submit candidates that actually fit the given criteria and have been pre-vetted to make sure that they do, bad agencies will just keyword search and throw as many CVs as they can at the client. As a contractor you want your CV to be the one that sticks out, not just one of a pile that goes straight in the bin.

When so much seems to be governed by cost and duration, I always wonder how many contractors have not been submitted for a position because the agent thinks they would not be chosen because of cost, even they would provide the best service? What happens if someone on a higher rate could do the same job in half the time, thus saving on the overall cost? When is an agent a barrier rather than a facilitator?

Trust is the key for any relationship between contractor and agent. Unfortunately trust can not be gained instantly, and the short timescale between being submitted for interview and accepting a contract is not long enough for this trust to be validated. If this trust breaks down the client and the contractor will be the ones that suffer the most.

It seems that agencies have some way to go to clean up their act and become more transparent. Organisation such as The Recruitment & Employment Confederation have their code of practice, where standard 2 calls for honesty and transparency. Unfortunately membership is not compulsory but it could be a useful indicator.

The future may be looking brighter but it seems that agencies may have already missed their chance to clean up their act.

Comments

# rmjcsltd said on December 10, 2009 09:00 PM:

The biggest problem I find with IT recruitment consultants is that they have very little understanding of the technologies for which they're sourcing skills. I don't expect them to be able to create an optimum clustered index, but I would like them to understand for example that SSIS, SSAS and SSRS are part of the SQL Server suite of products, SharePoint isn't SQL Server, and DBA is a pointlessly vague term. Simply performing a keyword search across 100,000 CVs isn't sufficient alone - the results need to be reviewed with a degree of understanding before pursuing the relevant ones. Most of the emails and phone calls I receive from recruitment consultants are completely irrelevant to me and serve no more purpose other than to highlight people I don't want to deal with.

When you say "Agencies may have their part to play in the contractor market..." what exactly is it that the agencies are supposed to provide to clients? Finding the right candidate, dealing with some administration, and bank rolling things? As discussed above it's probably pot-luck if an agency finds the best candidate, admin is admin regardless of whether it's between client and agency or client and consultant, and the client paying consultant invoices without an agency cut isn't exactly a hard sell. Given my experience with recruitment consultants (not all bad, but more bad than good) if I was hiring today I'd rather pay to subscribe to a CV database and do the keyword searching myself.

Interesting comments along the cost and duration line, which leads me to ask how or why things work the way they do in this country? Why do clients pay a rolling commission to the agencies? Surely a fixed finding fee, possibly with a fixed monthly admin fee would be more appropriate to the nature of the services they provide?

Any recruiters out there want to chip in here?

Cheers,

Rhys

# MartinBell said on December 12, 2009 12:20 PM:

Unfortunately I think agencies would exist in some guise whatever the situation. As you have technical  knowledge of SQL Server I would not expect you to require an agency, but there are companies that don’t have the people with either the skills or confidence to do the recruitment, or in some cases the necessary person won’t have the time. Even when a savvy person is available, the agency will be probably dealing with the personnel or administrative departments and any questions would have to be relayed. I would expect a good agent to ask the right questions of a company up front and get a decent requirement. Far too often you see requirements for everything under the sun as a must have, a keyword search for these will probably miss out on the expert in the important field that you really need.

I agree with you regarding the rolling commission, I have not seen an agent on-site for a very long time and they no longer seem to take to time to get to know clients and understand their businesses. I’ve never had any issues with being paid directly, when you are on a longer contract it is in the clients interest to keep you happy and pay on time, so the usual argument about providing a cash flow doesn’t hold up IMO.

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