getstaffed is recruitment 2.0

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…?

the contract market seems a little slow right now, and Andrew and I were coming up with strategies to deal with these inevitable downturns.

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.

well, quite a few new things happening with getstaffed. more site changes keeping me busy, a lot of stuff on the managers side as we get more feedback from them, which is great.

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

getstaffed is about changing how we find work. Its changing the whole landscape of IT recruitment, by allowing businesses and contractors to get in touch directly. getstaffed facilitates this, by having all the CV, testimonial, searching etc, but ultimately, its up to the contractor and the business to reach agreement.

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.