I thought I'd share this story, primarily for the interest of any agents I peruse this board, but also just for general interest.
The first agent who ever placed me as a contractor was a decent guy who spent a lot of time on the phone to me - wet behind the ears as I was - explaining how contracting worked, and how their agency handled limited cos and umbrella cos for contractors. He primed me for the role well, but most importantly, made me feel confident about stepping into contracting.
After he placed me, he checked in a couple of times to check I was OK, and to tell me the client had given him feedback and was very happy with my work. After I left, he touched base a few times. In short, he left a really good impression on me.
Recently, one of my clients (not my day job client, another one) asked me to help them recruit for a permie position, so I called this agent who by now had left the agency and set up his own agency. At the same time I called my current agency who are also quite decent. My current agent weren't happy to do anything without agreeing terms with my client (20% terms) so I had to leave it. The agent who first placed me however, was happy to have a punt on a potential placement, and placed an ad/sourced CVs and spoke to candidates all without having agreed any terms with my client.
The net result is: he found the candidate that they really like, he's got around £7,000 commission out of it, my client are very happy with me and him for working on this and he will probably get repeat business from them. The agent did ask if he needed to build something into his fees to 'kick back' to me, but I said no as I'm already getting paid by the client to help out with this.
I think this is a rather nice example of the symbiotic relationship that can exist between us contractors and agents. If more agents were more like this guy, and enabled us contractors to trust them and work with them, we'd all work together much more harmoniously and help the other party to earn more money!
Apologies for the pointless post, I just wanted to share the experience.
The first agent who ever placed me as a contractor was a decent guy who spent a lot of time on the phone to me - wet behind the ears as I was - explaining how contracting worked, and how their agency handled limited cos and umbrella cos for contractors. He primed me for the role well, but most importantly, made me feel confident about stepping into contracting.
After he placed me, he checked in a couple of times to check I was OK, and to tell me the client had given him feedback and was very happy with my work. After I left, he touched base a few times. In short, he left a really good impression on me.
Recently, one of my clients (not my day job client, another one) asked me to help them recruit for a permie position, so I called this agent who by now had left the agency and set up his own agency. At the same time I called my current agency who are also quite decent. My current agent weren't happy to do anything without agreeing terms with my client (20% terms) so I had to leave it. The agent who first placed me however, was happy to have a punt on a potential placement, and placed an ad/sourced CVs and spoke to candidates all without having agreed any terms with my client.
The net result is: he found the candidate that they really like, he's got around £7,000 commission out of it, my client are very happy with me and him for working on this and he will probably get repeat business from them. The agent did ask if he needed to build something into his fees to 'kick back' to me, but I said no as I'm already getting paid by the client to help out with this.
I think this is a rather nice example of the symbiotic relationship that can exist between us contractors and agents. If more agents were more like this guy, and enabled us contractors to trust them and work with them, we'd all work together much more harmoniously and help the other party to earn more money!
Apologies for the pointless post, I just wanted to share the experience.
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