This post will not provide you with an answer – it is just an idea for an even better way how contractors, agents and clients could work together.
Extras Andy Millman and his agent
When you’re a freelance consultant, one main area of your one-man-enterprise is acquiring new business. Finding your next assignment can be difficult and time consuming. Especially if you’re still finishing off a job for your existing client you don’t want to be spending time on the web or phone to hunt for your next role. Help is offered by the hundreds of job agencies which can be found in almost any developed country these days.
In todays world of work, agencies play an important role, because they bring contract seekers and contract offerers together and ease the flow of information and money throughout the contract. Once the contract is finished, the client can go back to the agent(s) and the whole selection process starts again. If a client is not happy with the work the agent has done, they can simply go and use another recruiter.
Contractors on the other hand, do not necessarily have this option. In fact, in most cases the relationship that was built between recruiter and contractor ends when the contract is terminated. Of course, it might happen that your agent has another position he would like to put you forward for, but during the last 5 years this has never happened to me.
This is where I envy people in the arts, for example. No, not (mainly) because of the work they do (you should see me act!), but because artists have ONE agent that they’re dealing with – usually on a long term basis. This one agent handles all negotiations with potential clients. This is the point I am trying to make here – they build a relationship which actually works well for both of them (in a good case): The contractor gets an agent which gets to know him and his work better and better. Thereby, the agent can increase his ability to market the freelancer even better in the future. Why is this not possible in the “normal” labour market ?
Welcome to the real world of work! This is the world in which (for example) clients are undecided about project staff decisions, agents are trying to compete for client business amongst themselves and contractors are simply too worried about finding the next job and are therefore happy to vagabond from one agent to another.
If anyone has a better answer why consultants can not have long term agents, please let me know !
Jon Reed
November 18, 2008 at 6:14amMichael, this post hit home to me because years ago, when I was an SAP recruiter, (I stopped running my own desk many years ago now), I fancied myself as trying to become such an agent for SAP folks. I liked the idea of being a long term advisor to SAP professionals and you can see the advantages of working with a trusted advisor that you can turn to again and again – especially since the SAP market does usually require a middle person.
Here is the problem I ran into: It’s basically impossible for one recruiter to represent the many opportunities an SAP professional needs access to. Most SAP customers have their own vendor short list, and you have to go through those vendors to get access to the project. In some cases, they will be willing to share their margin with an outside recruiter, but in other times, they will not.
I can recall situations where I willingly stepped out the loop in order for the consultant I was working with to get the rate they needed from their next project. This preserved our long term relationship but did create some challenges, because at that point, I was providing advice and counsel for free. Much of which I willingly did, but what I found is that consultants, understandably, needed flexibility to choose their projects, and in turn, that created challenges on my end as a recruiter. I wanted to be their “agent” in a sense, but being left out of many deals was frustrating even though it was nobody’s fault.
Artistic representation is different because in that culture, it is understood that you CANNOT contract the artist directly, you must go through the agent. In turn, the artist knows the agent will have access to all the opportunities in the market that they would want, so there would never be a need to go around them and do a deal without the agent in order to stay employed. Thus the “perfect mutuality” of that relationship is preserved.
So, I really like your idea, and it would be interesting to see it play out more like real agents in the SAP community as well. But there are challenges to be overcome. One thing I have seen is a more relaxed, non-exclusive form of this, where a consultant has several agencies they know and trust. But I think we’re not yet at a point where an SAP person is ready to tell companies, and/or third party firms, “you’ll have to talk to my agent.” 🙂 In many cases, the rates are just a bit too tight to work in an additional party in all cases.
On my web site, in a virtual sense, I have tried to create a bit of that “SAP Career Advisor” atmosphere. I realize I can’t possibly be that to every SAP person, but my hope is that I can at least create a place for honest discussion that people can turn to in order to get their career bearings in the short and long term. I hope that everyone in the SAP field can at least find some mentors they can talk to when they have to make big career moves, whether or not those folks are official “SAP Mentors.”
– Jon Reed –