agency % cut from a contract role?
Discussion
Dupont666 said:
XJSJohn said:
blindswelledrat said:
itsnotarace said:
blindswelledrat said:
Or alternatively, don't be a pikey.
Maybe if recruitment agencies took a fairer percentage for doing sweet FA.... You have an alternative- get off your arse and find your own job.
THe agency offer you a job at a given rate- it is either acceptable or it isn't. THat simple. WHat they make from it is nothing whatsoever to do with you becuase it is the client who pays thier bill not you.
the comission pays for the time that the agents spend in building up a relationship with clients, maintaining offices and administration staff, running payrolls etc. I would much rather have the whole rate myself but at the end of they day, i dont have the time and ability to do the networking when looking for a job, and when hiring i don't have the time to field the 1000 + CV's that regularly come in if you run an advert.
an agent / recruiter / head hunter takes away a lot of the pain of employment for the employee / employer.
Still call them slave traders mind you,
k all to do as he got the job based on my recommendations and they still creamed 10% of his wages a day.All I got was a poxy £500 referal fee which I split with said friend
zippy3x said:
no1special said:
blindswelledrat said:
itsnotarace said:
blindswelledrat said:
Or alternatively, don't be a pikey.
Maybe if recruitment agencies took a fairer percentage for doing sweet FA.... You have an alternative- get off your arse and find your own job.
THe agency offer you a job at a given rate- it is either acceptable or it isn't. THat simple. WHat they make from it is nothing whatsoever to do with you becuase it is the client who pays thier bill not you.
Some people just have a bee in their bonnet about people earning money 'off them'.
As BSR says, if you dont like it, get off your own arse and find a job.
I may need a tyre changed, and may not want to / possess the skills to change the tyre. The does not give the tyre fitter the right to charge me £100 to do it.
If you agents are so "worth it" then why do you hide your margins from both client and contractor?
XJSJohn said:
zippy3x said:
If you agents are so "worth it" then why do you hide your margins from both client and contractor?
most agencies i have worked through over the past 17 (good god is it that long) years have told me their comission when asked.TuxRacer said:
I just don't believe a recruiter has ever put in 3 months work to get an IT contractor a year in a job. 3 days would be a stretch.
Why should or would they spend 3 months working to get an IT contractor a year's work? A recruiter wouldn't make enough to live on like that surely, let alone service the other overheads.In my current contract, renewal time came round and I asked the agent if there was any room for him to manouvre on his margin and was told no chance.
I announced that I was going to walk, suddenly he found considerable room.
I've known agentss take between 11 and 25% margin, I suspect some will take more if they can get away with it.
There's also a very good reason why ISO9000 companies only want to work through an agenciy, as the agency are a supplier and therefore need a quality audit. Many companies also don't want too many suppliers on their books so would rather have a few agencies than scores of contractors.
I announced that I was going to walk, suddenly he found considerable room.
I've known agentss take between 11 and 25% margin, I suspect some will take more if they can get away with it.
There's also a very good reason why ISO9000 companies only want to work through an agenciy, as the agency are a supplier and therefore need a quality audit. Many companies also don't want too many suppliers on their books so would rather have a few agencies than scores of contractors.
zippy3x said:
If you agents are so "worth it" then why do you hide your margins from both client and contractor?
Most agencies are transaprent with thier clients about margins.The reason they may not be so forthcoming with this information to thier contractors is because there are still so many with this prehistoric attitude that they are somehow being ripped off if the agency charges more for them than it pays, as this thread aptly demonstrates.
It bizarre. Every company in effect makes money by employing people, no matter what industry you're in. Just something about recruitment which garners this "money for nothing" anger from people.
Recruitment is a s
t, hard job. What people don't seem to realise is that it is just sales. Every job you are given is the result of many hours cold calling, sales meetings etc etc
Recruitment consultants don't just sit thier and wait for jobs to pour in then rub thier hands whilst taking your money.
Of course there are s
t ones. And they are the ones that come and go in the industry, pissing people off as they do it.I have seen many, many contractors think "this recruitment is an easy lark-Im going to give it a go" only to leave after 3 months secure in the knowledge that they are far better off as they are!
Preach over.
zippy3x said:
no1special said:
blindswelledrat said:
itsnotarace said:
blindswelledrat said:
Or alternatively, don't be a pikey.
Maybe if recruitment agencies took a fairer percentage for doing sweet FA.... You have an alternative- get off your arse and find your own job.
THe agency offer you a job at a given rate- it is either acceptable or it isn't. THat simple. WHat they make from it is nothing whatsoever to do with you becuase it is the client who pays thier bill not you.
Some people just have a bee in their bonnet about people earning money 'off them'.
As BSR says, if you dont like it, get off your own arse and find a job.
I may need a tyre changed, and may not want to / possess the skills to change the tyre. The does not give the tyre fitter the right to charge me £100 to do it.
If you agents are so "worth it" then why do you hide your margins from both client and contractor?
Granted, there are a lot of cowboys out there who give decent agencies a bad name.
I have always been up front with fees when asked.
edc said:
TuxRacer said:
I just don't believe a recruiter has ever put in 3 months work to get an IT contractor a year in a job. 3 days would be a stretch.
Why should or would they spend 3 months working to get an IT contractor a year's work? A recruiter wouldn't make enough to live on like that surely, let alone service the other overheads.TuxRacer said:
If they're taking a 25% cut of what a contractor earns (and presuming they're as valuable as the contractor) it doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
An alternative view to this is the contractor is taking 75% (or whatever it works out to be) of the agency's amount 
Not my personal view, I think it's b
ks, but there you go. The contractor -> pimp -> client business model is here to stay, whether we like it or not, unless you have made the effort to build up your own 'market'. Even then, the client may still prefer to work through an agent, for a variety of reasons. Last place I was at I did all the legwork (from 'creating' the work to contract negotiations), but the client still insisted I went through an agent. So their cut was £50 a week. The soft bds still plagued me to get me to sign an Opt Out no1special said:
zippy3x said:
no1special said:
blindswelledrat said:
itsnotarace said:
blindswelledrat said:
Or alternatively, don't be a pikey.
Maybe if recruitment agencies took a fairer percentage for doing sweet FA.... You have an alternative- get off your arse and find your own job.
THe agency offer you a job at a given rate- it is either acceptable or it isn't. THat simple. WHat they make from it is nothing whatsoever to do with you becuase it is the client who pays thier bill not you.
Some people just have a bee in their bonnet about people earning money 'off them'.
As BSR says, if you dont like it, get off your own arse and find a job.
I may need a tyre changed, and may not want to / possess the skills to change the tyre. The does not give the tyre fitter the right to charge me £100 to do it.
If you agents are so "worth it" then why do you hide your margins from both client and contractor?
Granted, there are a lot of cowboys out there who give decent agencies a bad name.
I have always been up front with fees when asked.
All agents i've ever met claim to be the quality agents in an industry as you said (twice), with a lot of cowboys. The question really is that if your industry is 90% cowboys then it's hardly suprising that contractors and clients alike have the opinion that we do.
TuxRacer said:
edc said:
TuxRacer said:
I just don't believe a recruiter has ever put in 3 months work to get an IT contractor a year in a job. 3 days would be a stretch.
Why should or would they spend 3 months working to get an IT contractor a year's work? A recruiter wouldn't make enough to live on like that surely, let alone service the other overheads.As an example I once placed a perm guy at a 35% fee on a circa £135k salary. It was a good fee for the company but I was paid a slice as commission.
What might be a useful comparison is comparing a recruiter's earnings vs the revenue nd margin they generate to A.N other sales person in another industry.
With regards to margin transparency does this really happen as a norm in other industries? What about all the consumer goods that people buy? What about the bloke doing the block pave driveways? Wjat about the service of your fir or security alarm?
zippy3x said:
The problem seems to be that it's the big agencies that are the cowboys. They recruit failed double glazing and car salesmen who spend all day lying to meet presumably unattainable targets.
Bingo! Smaller ones tend to give a better hands on approach.zippy3x said:
All agents i've ever met claim to be the quality agents in an industry as you said (twice), with a lot of cowboys. The question really is that if your industry is 90% cowboys then it's hardly suprising that contractors and clients alike have the opinion that we do.
I'm not sure what it is you do, but if you were cr@p at it, would you say to a potential client "Yes I can do XYZ, but there are a lot of cowboys in this industry, and to be honest, I am one of them???Fittster said:
What is interesting is how HR people get away with being so fking lazy. Stick add on jobserver and you can you out the agents 25%/
Not all king lazy. Stick add on jobserver and you can you out the agents 25%/Lots of companies do recruit directly but in a competitive market you have to decide whether it is worth having a varied strategy and whether the cost is 'worth' it. Also, not all companies have the skill, or experience to handle lots of recruitment. Adverts can work to an extent but they are time consuming too. Employers often won't have access to the bulk job uploaders, won't have on-going contracts for advertising. Then you get in to the situation where contractors and applicants complain that employers don't respond to their application.
I am an HR person. I hardly do any recruitment these days as it not a core part of my job.
zippy3x said:
The problem seems to be that it's the big agencies that are the cowboys. They recruit failed double glazing and car salesmen who spend all day lying to meet presumably unattainable targets.
.
THats actually a pretty astute observation, particularly in my sector..
There is a bizarre mentality among big clients that only the biggest agencies can cope with thier business. Despite the fact they pay more, get the s
ttest service from the least experienced consultants who get paid ridiculously low wages and have impossible targets.Fittster said:
What is interesting is how HR people get away with being so fking lazy. Stick add on jobserver and you can you out the agents 25%/
Believe it or not, in most cases it's actually cheaper to pay the 25% agency fee.king lazy. Stick add on jobserver and you can you out the agents 25%/You could easily run a number of adds at £1k per pop and not get the right person for the job. While going to the agencies you get unlimited free CVs and are guaranteed to get the person you want.
I've skimmed through the responses, and I don't see anyone referring to cash flow.
Surely this is a large advantage to a one-man-band Ltd Co contractor, and therefore another reason for there being a reasonable margin being charged?
If the agency pays you on say 7 to 14 day terms, the likelihood is that they are not going to see that back from the client for another 60 days.
Multiply the cost of that cash out of their account / the cost of factoring that outlay, by the number of active contractors they have, and that's a pretty large overhead.
Surely this is a large advantage to a one-man-band Ltd Co contractor, and therefore another reason for there being a reasonable margin being charged?
If the agency pays you on say 7 to 14 day terms, the likelihood is that they are not going to see that back from the client for another 60 days.
Multiply the cost of that cash out of their account / the cost of factoring that outlay, by the number of active contractors they have, and that's a pretty large overhead.
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