Re: [SLUG] Contracting stuff: wrap it into a company or PAYE through agency?

[Michael (Micksa) Slade]

Scott wrote: On Friday 22 September 2006 13:33, Adam Kennedy wrote: What I would look out for is recruiting firms. I had one that placed me once, into a job I wasn't particularly suited to. They took 15% from the employer for that. Some time after I was chatting with them and they said "oh, if we'd known you were a networking person we could have got you a lot more" -- ie, they hadn't even read my CV for their 15% and they were really working for the employer, not for me. One of the Perl maintainers did an analysis of this situation a few years ago. His conclusion was that their intrinsic interests don't belong with either party. They don't work for the companies, and they don't work for the people they find jobs for. The remuneration structure of the industry means they work only for themselves, and the situation is set up for them to abuse both sides and use every trick they can to do so. Recruiting Firms do try to keep both parties Happy!! It is important for us to place people in jobs that : 1 - They are capable of doing!! 2 - That they enjoy doing!! 3 - In a Place they want to work For the Client we Try to Match 1 - The Skill they ask for 2 - A Reliable Person 3 - At a Remuneration Level they can afford!! [snip] Okay, thankyou for the marketing spiel. I've been dealing with recruiters for the past few weeks.  Now I'm going to vent. I somewhat disagree with Adam, I think there is *some* incentive for recruiters to work in the interests of their clients (to get repeat business and earn a reputation), but really that's it.   Recruiters are people hoarders and glorified resume databases.  Because of the nature of most contracts the employees and candidates get the smelly end of the stick.  *Some* recruiters simply ask for a percentage on the employee's salary so that's not so bad, but others are more secretive and try to maximise their cut by being a "mediator" for negotiation between candidate and client.  They have no time for candidates that are too assertive about their abilities - a person who won't negotiate their rate is harder to get in and thus less worth their time.  They also have no time for candidates that are going for a few jobs at once for similar reasons.  They're uptight and on edge because of their job and all this gets let out on candidates because it's the *companies* that pay.  They'll try all sorts of bullshit on candidates to get them to take the job for less or whatever to get their cut, and generally give them no respect.  The only candidates that get mentioned to clients are those that have "x years using skill y" on their resumes, because that's all recruiters have time to discover - general talent, resourcefulness and initiative and so on are deplorably overlooked. But I agree with Adam to this extent: the end result of this is that companies will have a lot of trouble getting the really *good* people out of recruiters, because these people won't go anywhere near recruiters for the reasons stated above.  It makes a commodity market out of the labor market, which it really isn't. To summarise, recruiters suck. Mick.

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