Hello,
I like a lot of other people hate agencies and I also hate the fact that make so much money out of contractors for doing next to nothing.
I was thinking the other day how I could get away from having to deal with agencies and deal direct with the client.
I think some sort of contractor alliance which operated behind a website which authorised clients could access would be a good idea, but it would take some advertising.
So essentially you register at this site and upload your cv, fill out a profile containing your skills, which locations you will work in and keep your availability up to date. You make clients aware of this and create hem an account to use. They can search on various criteria such as skills and location, view reviews which other clients have left from your previous gigs etc. They can contact you via email, or directly in the website. They can post job ads in a forum etc. I'm sure with a bit more thought and input from others you could stick a load more ideas on the list. Contractors would need to invited by other members so you can have some control over who get in and you could also control who was allowed to join by their skill set so the place doesn't become saturated.
I know you can do something similar on sites like Monster but you still have the problem with agents. You could ban agents from the site and only give out accounts to clients. The contractor would pay a small annual fee which would go towards paying the hosting costs and doing any advertising and marketing. This would be a non-profit organisation with full transparency on the finances. The site could obviously be created by the contractors, or maybe it could be outsourced
What do you think about the idea? Getting it out there would be the tricky part but if everyone reading this made there client aware today that such a service exists and gave them an account you would be already well on your way.
Can anyone see any problems with this? Or do you have any reasons why it wouldn't appeal to you? Does something pretty much the same already exist?
I like a lot of other people hate agencies and I also hate the fact that make so much money out of contractors for doing next to nothing.
I was thinking the other day how I could get away from having to deal with agencies and deal direct with the client.
I think some sort of contractor alliance which operated behind a website which authorised clients could access would be a good idea, but it would take some advertising.
So essentially you register at this site and upload your cv, fill out a profile containing your skills, which locations you will work in and keep your availability up to date. You make clients aware of this and create hem an account to use. They can search on various criteria such as skills and location, view reviews which other clients have left from your previous gigs etc. They can contact you via email, or directly in the website. They can post job ads in a forum etc. I'm sure with a bit more thought and input from others you could stick a load more ideas on the list. Contractors would need to invited by other members so you can have some control over who get in and you could also control who was allowed to join by their skill set so the place doesn't become saturated.
I know you can do something similar on sites like Monster but you still have the problem with agents. You could ban agents from the site and only give out accounts to clients. The contractor would pay a small annual fee which would go towards paying the hosting costs and doing any advertising and marketing. This would be a non-profit organisation with full transparency on the finances. The site could obviously be created by the contractors, or maybe it could be outsourced
What do you think about the idea? Getting it out there would be the tricky part but if everyone reading this made there client aware today that such a service exists and gave them an account you would be already well on your way.
Can anyone see any problems with this? Or do you have any reasons why it wouldn't appeal to you? Does something pretty much the same already exist?
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