So a quick update, since there hasnt been an update here for a while!

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!

Well, 2009 is here, wheres my hover car?

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

As you may have noticed, this blog is a bit-of-a tumbleweed zone. So I thought I’d post up our latest hiring manager newsletter…. hey anything for a bit of content!

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

Spring is here! I feel it!

I’ve been a bit disconnected recently, with Andrew taking over most of the selling work and me just doing a few updates to the site. I’m blaming winter which normally has a slightly depressing impact, and now that spring is here, I’ve got a good feeling!

getstaffed is starting to pick up, both in terms of business involvement and placement activity. We are getting more jobs up, which is great because they were unsolicited, meaning the companies involved put them up without Andrew or I harassing them. And we’re getting a good number of responses so hopefully some more placements happening.

I mentioned in a previous post how people were looking at getstaffed and not seeing many jobs, because we only advertise real existing jobs, and we expire them every two weeks. Hopefully we are going to be picking up more real jobs as we head into spring. Andrew has been busy contacting CIO’s in Auckland and Wellington, and we’ve had several really informative meetings, including, who would have thought?!?, a meeting with a large (really large) government department.

So with a bit of luck and some prodding, we might prise open the conservative doors of government.

And www.ratemyagency.co.nz has gone really well, and we’re getting a good feel for the state (not so good!) of the IT recruitement industry in New Zealand.

With the coming of spring, and fwuffy bunny wabbits and bouncy lambies, I’ll be posting more often, keeping everyone up-to-date with getstaffed goings on! viva la revolucion!

for all the times I heard…”Greg, hi, you’re from getstaffed right…? Um, I was wondering….”

Where are all the jobs?!?

Hmm. What we really want is a million jobs, that you guys can all choose from. I’m talking about real jobs, not ‘registrations of interest’ or ‘projects that will be starting …’ or ‘oh sorry, that project has been cancelled’ jobs.

This is getstaffeds biggest problem. Our hiring companies prefer to search, and contact our members directly. I can understand why, its just easier. No hassle with approval,  etc., just search, contact the people, and get them on if there is an opportunity. Which is how getstaffed is meant to work, but it doesn’t look like much is happening on the site.

And… we’re not that big. Hiring companies are getting used to the concept of paying $3/hour rather than … quite a lot more than that! We’re looking at hiring some more people to speed things up, because theres a lot of companies, and just Andrew and I at the moment.

Weve also got some plans to let you contact businesses when they are searching, so you can actually get in touch directly with the companies, which is the whole point of getstaffed. We need to run those ideas past some of our businesses first, but we will let you guys know!

cheers

Greg

RateMyAgency is now live! We all have good and bad stories about different recruitment agents, the ones who understand, the ones who don’t, the ones that can’t even remember when your contract is ending, and many people are looking for a ‘good’ recruiter.

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

its been a great getstaffed week. Andrew and I have had a big think about where we need to be going, and what we are planning to do, which was really good. We also had some external feedback from some people who we know, but arent affiliated (yet!) with getstaffed. And these people are high up in the companies that getstaffed is targetting. And their feedback was pretty positive all up, some good thoughts and things we could be doing, but very positive. And some indication that getstaffed is getting pretty well known in the industry.

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!

it must be election year. The national party are jumping all over the labour party for a 65K splurge on a conference for the Housing Dept.

$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…?

I’ve been a bit slack on the blog postings, sorry! Lots of other stuff to do, and I just seem to drop the ball sometimes, like an all black in a world cup quarter final.

getstaffed is building up steam, we have some new companies on board, and we are getting a much clearer picture of what motivates those companies. Some are cost driven, which means they use seek a lot, whereas others are not so motivated by cost, so they utilise recruiters a lot.

So now we are just working out how to pitch things correctly, to let these guys know the value of getstaffed. We have both our member and business side to keep happy, and one won’t grow without the other. And vice versa. Like a super chicken/egg story, not quite sure which is which! We also need to let our members know that a lot of our companies don’t post jobs, but prefer to search and contact directly. And, we need to do it in such a way that people don’t get pissed with our communications and start flagging us as spam!

In any case, we’re definitely trying to make things better/easier/faster. We are looking at raising some cash to be a bit more aggressive in growth terms in NZ. So we will let you know how that goes. Shes a hard road, finding the perfect business plan/execution strategy/etc!

as always, let us know if you love us/hate us/have suggestions/have criticisms/just want to chat about the market/have a nice cookie recipe!

Just has lunch with a good friend who is in recruitment. We chatted about the industry and the subject of salary and remuneration structures came up. Pretty normal stuff – base salaries, commissions performance bonuses.

The bit that had my eyes watering was the story of three recruiters who recently left my friend’s business to start their own recruitment agency. Their salaries were all upwards of $1.5m per year. Presumably they thought they could do better be going out on their own !!

I’m sure most people in the recruitment industry would have some claim to their adding value to their clients’ businesses, but the salaries here put these recruiters in the slave trade industry in my view.

So what’s the verdict?  Do recruitment agencies add enough value to have employees paid millions?  You can guess what I think!