We’ve also been talking to some more traditional recruitment companies (but only the best ones!) to find out where it makes sense for us to support them, and for them to support us, because we really, really want to get everyone jobs, so we are working on innovative ways to make sure we do that. We’re trying new things,  and its pretty exciting times. We will probably make mistakes (more mistakes, we’re good at mistakes!) but as Michael Jordan said…

Its exciting times! And … its becoming warmer. The market is picking up, life is good!

Ok, quick update:

getstaffed has over 1500 members, but we are still struggling to get big companies to use us. We think its simply because our primary offering (ie, super-super cheap recruitment) is not hitting the buttons of the HR staff in those companies. Smaller companies tend to have HR staff that are much more aligned with where the company is at. Its a difficult one for us to solve, but Im just going to keep annoying them!

So most of the companies regularly using getstaffed are smaller companies. Air NZ is currently trialling us, and they have already grabbed one contractor. Slick work there! Did you see the job ad they put up? No, me neither, because they did what lots of people do, and just searched and contacted (and contracted!) Steve. We do ask them to put up an ad, but… hmm.

So getstaffed is ticking over. Small changes, I’ve stuck up the latest searches that companies are doing, so you at least know theres something going on, some mods to look and feel, inclusion of the available date on the profile page, that sort of thing.

I just got back from a crazy trip, and Andrew has just gone on one. And I will try and post more often!

A bit of a getstaffed 2008 recap…

2008 was our first more or less mostly full time on getstaffed time, and we started off pretty slow, me (Greg) doing some site improvements and Andrew rustling up business while juggling other balls. Our numbers of contractors started shooting up, and our signed up businesses started going up more slowly.

We even started placing a few people, and giving everyone getstaffed points, which later gave some of our contractors free trips to places like… Auckland, Rarotonga and Europe. Yay!

But…. on the downside, businesses are still reluctant to use us. Initially, we started off with a “build the website, take off to tahiti” mentality, but ended with a “We’ll help you with that” slant, as we worked out most of our big businesses were not really motivated too much by the thought of saving thousands a week (for some, tens of thousands). So we moved more into a full service, low cost model, but still struggled with trying to change the way businesses have been doing things. We are getting known around town, and mixing up the status quo with things like www.ratemyagency.co.nz. That one was only a few days work, but it really … um… educated… some people out there!

We still havent found the ideal mixing point for getstaffed, as you can see by the lack of jobs! So we will be trying some new initiatives this year to try and cement getstaffed as the place to hire IT contractors. Thanks for all of your excellent support and comments and suggestions, hope you all had a great christmas and new year!

cheers

Greg and Andrew

getstaffed Hiring Manager Newsletter, 15-October-2008

Regional Rate Variations
In this newsletter we take a quick look at regional variations in IT contract rates. Want to know which skills cost more in Auckland, and which cost more in Wellington? Then this newsletter should help.

I read somewhere recently that the public service in Wellington has grown by 13 hectares in the last 9 years! This is a measure of the additional floor space taken up by expanding government agencies. More floor space, demonstrating more demand should, in theory, see increased rates.

So I thought it might be interesting to analyse the rate information supplied by getstaffed contractors. I wasn’t prepared for the size of the rate disparity as shown below.

Skills shortage?
If your recruitment agency cites a ’skills shortage’ as reason for the difficulty in filling a role then you may be justified in being a little skeptical. The table below shows the most commonly sought IT contractor skills registered with getstaffed, as at 22-Oct-2008

As you can see, getstaffed lists plenty of independent contractors available right now. J2EE skills are in-demand while PHP skills are more easy to secure. Feel free to log in anytime to find contractors and review their on-line profiles.

How could we …
… make getstaffed a more valuable resource for your business?

The contractor community now has almost 1100 skilled independent professionals and we’re sure that the right people for your project needs are there for you. Despite the size and value of the community we not seeing the level of login/search/ad-placement activity that we would expect.

So Greg and I must be doing something wrong(ish). Do you have any suggestions? We would really really like your feedback.

Thanks!
Thanks for being part of the getstaffed community. It’s great to have you aboard

Regards,
Andrew (one of the ‘getstaffed guys‘)

PS. Remember to send us your contract vacancy listings… so that you can find the right contractors, at the right price, right now.

Feel free to contact us anytime.  Still keen to use an agency? Check out the community feedback at Rate My Agency!

@ Get Staffed Limited

Now we think getstaffed is the best way to go, but we’re still starting up. And there will always be a requirement to deal with recruiters in our industry. So, how do you find a good one?

RateMyAgency lets people put in comments and ratings on any recruitment agency, so you can see at a glance the ones people have had good (and bad) experiences with.

Send the link to anyone and everyone, and we will send the feedback to recruiters when we get enough data.

Cheers

Greg

And, we had some more jobs and a placement with one of our big bank members,  which is great. I think the best thing for Andrew and I is… all the feedback we get, from contractors and businesses, is… “Great concept, its about time!”. Contractors obviously complain a bit that we don’t have enough jobs. We do try, but the reality is, most of our placements are by companies searching, rather than posting job ads.

We’ve still got a long way to go to change the industry, and put large chunks of money back into the businesses that hire contractors, and the contractors themselves. But we’ve made a start!

$65K? Sounds like a lot right?

But lets look at it. A single large government department, with 100 contractors with a recruitment margin of $15/hr (the minimum rate for one of the big recruitment agents, so I’m underestimating), costs that department $60,000 a week. The getstaffed charge would be $12000, so the excess is $48,000.

So about $50K per week. For a single government department. A week. So maybe $65,000 for a 2 day retreat is not quite as important as the national party would want you to believe…?

Our problem, or situation rather, is that there will be times when we don’t have many jobs. Its the nature of the business, and indicative that we have lots more to do to raise getstaffeds profile in the market, and convince some… more conservative… organisations that we are legit, and actually the best way to find people.

Of course, we compared ourselves to the situations on seek, or any of the recruitment agents. Our thing is, we only advertise real jobs. Jobs that have been posted by real companies, for a real position that they have a real need to fill.

All real. But how many times have you responded to an ad on seek and “the position has been filled”, or “that project is delayed (or cancelled)”, or “registrations of interest in an upcoming (nonexistent) project”. And how many times have you responded to several ads, only to find out that theres only one position?

All this happens all the time. We all know it, and seek loves it! More ads, more money. Recruiters get to capture cvs, in case something comes up, and it looks good.

We need lots of members too, we’re up front about that. But… all our job ads are real. Really real. When you respond to an ad, you don’t respond to Andrew or I. You respond directly to the company.

And if we don’t have job ads… we will tell you. Straight up. Everything on getstaffed.com is real. And we commit to keeping it that way.

also, some cool stuff on the contractor side of things, number one being… my cool new front page! well. ok, maybe that might be number 2, since my graphic design skills are a bit rubbish. But I did manage to get the PDF contractor profile going, which is nice. Basically, members are getting all these cool testimonials, and want to show them to companies who haven’t come to the getstaffed family (family… we sound like the mafia. cool!)

so, theres a new link in the profile page (email my profile to me (so I can send it to non-getstaffed companies) which will get you a nifty pdf of the getstaffed profile page, with all your testimonials and the skills matrix.

we hope its useful, its a good way of getting the getstaffed name to far distant places where people havent heard of us. I KNOW! who hasnt heard of us? Inconceivable! Like always, let us know what you think at support@getstaffed.com

We don’t try and get in the way, we just try and help. But there are a lot of challenges, changing an industry. Particularly keeping both our contractors and our businesses engaged. We have a couple of businesses now who appear to make getstaffed their first stop, because they have had success recruiting through us. Others… well, aren’t so involved.

Andrew and I are starting a big push over the next month or so to increase the level of engagement from particularly our business customers. ie, explaining exactly what getstaffed is, how it works, and why its the best! We are also restarting our business expansion plans, recruiting more businesses to the site. Our goal is to have 5 or so active contracts* per week, so check back and let us know how we are doing!

*That would be “getstaffed Real contracts”, not the “register your interest, we have HEAPS of (non-existent) contracts for MAJOR companies (who havent actually agreed to anything)” jobs on seek. Repeated by 10 recruitment agents. Our jobs really exist.