FDM group - Mounties

[DieScum]

Anyone had any experience of the FDM group and their 'Mounties'?

http://www.investegate.co.uk/Article...3090700074822O

Looks like their whole business model is to hire graduates, train them up for a few months, then bill them out to clients at top whack under the leadership of a contractor or senior internal person.

Sounds like they are billing close to 200k per head and they claim 99% billable hours.

Anyone worked with these guys? Looks like a smart business model.

[Mich the Tester]

Looks like their whole business model is to hire graduates, train them up for a few months, then bill them out to clients at top whack under the leadership of a contractor or senior internal person.

Isn't that the business model of all the big consultancies?

[pmeswani]

Anyone had any experience of the FDM group and their 'Mounties'?

http://www.investegate.co.uk/Article...3090700074822O

Looks like their whole business model is to hire graduates, train them up for a few months, then bill them out to clients at top whack under the leadership of a contractor or senior internal person.

Sounds like they are billing close to 200k per head and they claim 99% billable hours.

Anyone worked with these guys? Looks like a smart business model.

Had an interview with them shortly after I graduated. Got past the first stage (their first phase of interviews was to determine your programming awareness skills). I declined to opportunity to go further on the grounds that I had to self-finance my living costs (even though they did provide a sandwich for lunch). I couldn't afford it at the time... with debts against my name.

I am not doubting their business model... it obviously works as they have been around for at least 13 years.

[scaramanga]

I work with some FDM people. There are some ok ones but the majority are useless. They get paid a pittance in comparison to the amounts being billed by FDM, although I'd be surprised if that was as much as 200K. In the good times they would tend to have to pick up the graduates who were not good enough to get onto a company's grad scheme directly hence the lower quality. Maybe they can pick up some better ones now the likes of the banks and other blue chips aren't hiring as many grads.

I once had the experience of interviewing a few of them and was faced with a guy who admitted he didn't pay any attention in lectures, an Indian woman who claimed to be a Java instructor in India but didn't have any basic knowledge and a non CS grad interviewing for a dev job a week after he had written his first Hello World program.

Overall if I was ClientCo I wouldn't go near them.

[sal626]

Yeah, contracted through FDM for two years, not as mountie but worked with FDM mounties on same client site.

Its a good business model, unless you are a mountie. FDM is making good money off them - although you can say they do provide the training. Most of the mounties I worked with were technically very good.

The only thing they didn't like was that you dont have a choice which company/location you can be placed in - you could end up anywhere. The contract period is for two years, after which you can move to a higher rate or go find a contract yourself.

[expat]

Isn't that the business model of all the big consultancies?

Absolutely.

[Torran]

worked with KPMG bods a few years back. They were billing £1250 p.d for their graduate chap. He was on £26k

[DieScum]

I say 200k because their results say 50 million turnover across 250 billable employees.

So do they pay staff during the four months training? Or is that self funded?

I see on their website that if someone leaves before the two year contract they must repay the cost of training - 20k. Not sure how legally binding that would be.

It's a business model I wouldn't mind trying myself. You'd need a partnership with someone with decent recruitment industry experience.

[pmeswani]

I say 200k because their results say 50 million turnover across 250 billable employees.

So do they pay staff during the four months training? Or is that self funded?

I see on their website that if someone leaves before the two year contract they must repay the cost of training - 20k. Not sure how legally binding that would be.

It's a business model I wouldn't mind trying myself. You'd need a partnership with someone with decent recruitment industry experience.

It is self funded, as far as I know, via the Learning Development Grants / Loans.

[DieScum]

Looking closely they probably get a lot of their revenue from pure recruitment of contractors so the mountie revenue will be a lot less than 200k.