change is good
as we have progressed through getstaffed, from its initial conception through various iterations and discussions, we’ve realised that getstaffed is an industry changer.
When we first started, we were thinking “it’d be great to offer a good alternative to recruitment agents”, and our goals were pretty modest. Some people using us, organic growth, make the world a better place.
As we have lived the getstaffed life, our thinking has become a bit more… not aggressive, but maybe we just have a lot more belief. Getstaffed is an industry changer. Sounds kinda pushy, but everything about getstaffed is not repeatable by traditional recruiters. We make our model open. Everyone knows our margins ($3/hr for a contractor, and we’re looking at $2000 for a permanent placement). Members have access to their data, and can use their testimonials elsewhere. There are no secrets.
We want to be the preferred supplier of choice, simply because we offer an unbeatable model. not because we somehow managed to get a piece of paper signed. We want IT people to come to us, because we offer stackloads of getstaffed points and they love flying around the place.
We think we have an unbeatable model for business. And IT people. Our challenge right now is to get everyone knowing about it, and using it. And thats our focus now.
May 7, 2008 at 10:19 pm
I’m a headhunter so I know you’re going to think I’m biased but I really don’t see how this model is any different from a niche job board that charges more, or a recruiter who charges less. You really think this is an industry changer or recruitment 2.0?
May 8, 2008 at 8:55 am
Steven, not bias at all… just a different angle which is all good. Greg and I do think our model is an industry changer, but only time will tell if we’re right.
Job boards haven’t really changed the industry too much. They’ve just inserted themselves into the advertising value-chain and become a key part of recruitment agencies’ businesses. >95% of job ads are placed by recruitment agencies so, from a client’s perspective cost has just shifted from one advertising channel (eg newspaper) to another.
The thing we’re doing is driving cost our of the recruitment process for the benefit of the client. We’re doing this by unbundling the recruitment process into its component parts and allowing our clients to choose which they want to do and which we’d like us to do for them. Activities that are automated and precede a hiring decision are all free. Reference and probity checking are all sold per unit at cost+margin. The bottom line is that we don’t have the overhead of buildings, leases, staff etc so we are able to scale up with minimal cost. Will we succeed? Time will tell.
May 9, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Andrew, this is an old idea, it’s been done all over the internet, if you knew anything about the online recruitment industry you’d know this. The idea isn’t an “industry changer”. You could quite possibly build a business out of it. But I think you’re embarrassing yourselves with your lack of knowledge about the real issues for companies trying to recruit talent by trying to sell it as “recruitment 2.0″.
May 10, 2008 at 10:01 am
Hi Steven, thanks for your… slightly less than constructive feedback. I don’t think we’re “embarrassing ourselves”, we’re very upfront about what we don’t know. We listen very carefully to our member businesses, and to our contract and permanent members, and try to adjust ourselved to hone in specifically on their requirements. We have a lot of scope to do that, given our fixed costs are so low. But time will tell.
We are IT specific, and we are experienced IT consultants, and one thing we do know is that recruitment agents have no idea about IT skill sets. For contractors particularly, the value added by traditional recruitment agents is limited, something we hear over and over again from our member businesses. And there is a feeling of resentment from contractors and businesses alike that recruiters should charge so much for something where they add so little value.
So we’re another avenue, one that hasn’t existed previously, at least in the New Zealand market.
If you want to define recruitment 2.0, go for it, but my feeling is that recruitment 2.0 has much less reliance on intermediaries and much more reliance on low cost transparent networks like getstaffed.
May 10, 2008 at 11:08 am
Greg, I think the “resentment” you talk about is more your resentment and that of a few people who think the same way you do rather than being reality. I suspect you’ve always been a little angry about when you get a contract that someone else is getting paid. It’s probably one of the big reasons you started this business. That unfortunately, and I’m being constructive here, is because you have a vast misunderstanding of the recruitment business. You say you know that “recruitment agents have no idea about IT skill sets”. But if that’s the case why do so many companies use Recruiters? Are all these hiring managers idiots? And how do all these IT Recruiters stay in business if they have no idea? That just doesn’t stand up to the reality of the marketplace.
There are many legitimate complaints about individual recruitment consultants, but the industry is driven on competition and for the most part results based charging. That means that you as a candidate pay nothing when you get a job/contract through an agent and the client only pays when they get what they want. It doesn’t get much fairer than that. You’re also very fond of saying that Recruiters “add so little value”. That again just doesn’t stand up to reality either. I guarantee you that every experienced Recruiter can provide examples of when they’ve got candidates better rates, or better jobs than they could have found themselves and clients for whom they’ve found exceptional candidates.
So I’ll say it again, you’re embarrassing yourselves for saying your an “industry changer” and your showing an incredible lack of class for bad-mouthing many respectable and hard-working recruitment agents at the same time by using terms like “slave trader” or by saying that they are resented for the work they do. I hope that’s more constructive.
May 10, 2008 at 11:33 am
I guess that is a little more constructive. There are many legitimate reasons that companies use recruitment agencies, but expertise in IT skill sets is unlikely to be one of them. I never said hiring managers were idiots, and it is not a logical conclusion from my statement.
My comments were not personal, but relaying what our businesses and members have said to us. We are primarily focussed on contract placement, I’m not sure that is your area, and things (I believe) will be different in the permanent space, where good recruitment agents can add significant value.
The market ultimately will decide, as it should. I don’t think anybody who tries to offer an alternative is “embarrassing themselves”, and the resentment felt by (particularly) contractors is real. Saying its a lack of class doesnt make the reality disappear. I guess we will just have to agree to disagree, and wait to see the outcome.
Regards
Greg
May 10, 2008 at 1:20 pm
I didn’t say you said hiring managers were idiots. You and Andrew have gone a long way to say how Recruiters are expensive and add very little value, slave traders even. Since the majority of companies who can afford to hire IT Contractors use Recruiters too, I’m asking if you think those companies are idiots. Why do you think someone uses such a low value service and pays such a high cost?
I’m curious about the resentment from Contractors you’ve heard too. I know plenty of great Contractors who just go direct and get their own contracts with companies. The only time they go to an agent is when they can’t find something themselves, which in the current market is probably once in the last couple of years. They never pay for the service either, the client does and because of their skills they always earn fantastic money. What are they so resentful of?
May 18, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Too scared to answer my questions guys?
May 18, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Hi Steven,
I guess I thought we had reached a point where further discussion was not valuable. But ok, glad you’re still reading!
There are many reasons for companies to utilise recruiters to find contractors. At the moment, there is basically two extremes when it comes to finding a contractor, namely no-service job boards, and full-service recruiters. Many companies don’t have time/resources to use the no-service route, so they use recruiters. Fairly simple and logical. They might also have time constraints on finding the person, and see recruiters as a faster route. They might also have preferred supplier agreements, and utilise recruiters because it is “what they do”. Change takes time and energy and one of the challenges of getstaffed is to make the change to our model simple.
We aim to be a middle ground. We think there is demand from both sides of the equation.
Re: contractor resentment, I was just passing on feedback we have heard repeatedly. Many contractors use recruiters because many companies use recruiters, and it is (for some) difficult to find jobs in another way. They might not have massive networks, or might not like to use their networks to find jobs. The sense of resentment comes not from the money, but the relative contributions of the contractor versus the recruiter. Could you argue that a recruiter contributes 20% as much as a developer/tester/ba to the successful completion of a project? Probably not. Yet that is the relative contribution of the company. And we’d like to offer an alternative.
regards
Greg
May 18, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Hey, thanks for answering, you’re right I’m probably the only one reading. Finally it’s good to hear you admit that basically this is a niche job board. You offer a mid-level service that costs more than a job board and less than a recruiter. This comes back to my initial point at the beginning of this thread that this is hardly a new idea that will revoiutionize the recruitment industry.
In regards to the resentment. I guess I could argue till I’m blue in the face about “relative contributions” being called relative for a reason). But basically this comes down to you looking at the problem as black and white. You see it as there are people who need contracts, who you call “IT Contractors” and there are people who need them called “Clients’. You want to empower the Clients and Contractors and get all the other assholes out of the way. Except for one - you. Still since your model is IDENTICAL to a Recruiters; don’t you think people will resent you too? Especially since you admit to offering a lower level of service but an hourly fee, which could be a horrendous amount of money over a long contract for a service that is much closer to a job board than a Recruiter.
May 18, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Steven,
If you are saying that our model is one in which we provide a service and get paid for it then yes - we’re just like recruitment agencies. But there are key differences in the way our service is packaged. Here are some that spring to mind:-
1. Contractors contract directly with the hiring business. getstaffed does not intermediate on the rate, terms.
2. We charge nothing to advertise or search the database (which is quite probably the most up-to-date contractor database in NZ).
3. There’s a degree of ‘unbundling’ in our model. If a customer wants to take on reference checking then we provide the contact details and leave them to it, or they can have us do each one for a flat-fee. They can choose different one method today, and the other tomorrow.
4. We’re more transparent that many other recruiters. Our margin is $3 per hour and we’re very open about this. By contrast most agencies explicitly contract non-disclosure of rates information by customer and contractor. Why is that I wonder?
5. Just launched (and not even announced to our customers yet - you’re the first to know) a up-to-the-minute rate survey facility that aggregates contractor-supplied hourly rate information and makes this available to customers at any time
As for getting all ‘assholes out of the way’ [your words] that’s not our objective at all. As you will know this supply chain is filled with different service providers, from CV writers, reference/probity checking services, psychometric test support, remuneration planning professionals, interview facilitators to name a few. We’re providing a new way for a number of these components to be selected and packaged or unpackaged by hiring business who may have previously relied on an agency to facilitate the lot.
As for being us being resented, so far there’s no such sentiment from our contractors or from our customers. Quite the opposite in fact. Which is nice.
May 24, 2008 at 10:41 am
I give up. I still can’t work out which part is the “industry-changing recruitment 2.0″ bit. Is it the part where you don’t make any money?