Wille Faler’s Buzzword Bingo

Its about that time again: my current contract is up next Monday, and I have declined to extend it. After some 3+ hours of commuting everyday for the last 18 months (two different contracts), I am starting to feel it. I need a bit of time to relax. That means I won’t be rushing back into another contract, but on the other hand if something attractive where to fall into my lap I might consider it, but I wont be searching very hard at least for the next few weeks.

I am considering taking the whole summer of, May ’til the end of July as I am currently sitting on a comfortable pile of cash, since I took myself out of the property market. If it ends up that way I don’t know, but if it did that is ok: it will give me some time to visit relatives, go to some place warm for a few weeks, and perhaps visit New York and some other major city. It is the last summer of my twenties, so I might as well enjoy it.

Although being impatient as I am, I doubt I will be sitting on my laurels the whole summer (I doubt I’ll last a week): I might work on some of my own little projects, and/or take up some project and freelance work that would allow me to do a bit of traveling in between over the summer (and you never know, if someone dangles something sufficiently interesting in front of me, I might cancel my summer plans).
So, if anyone has any need for a dynamic, entrepreneurial and very senior Java/J2EE and integration guy, feel free to contact me (my background can be seen on my LinkedIn profile)! I’m open to most things, including short assignments and remote projects.
However, I have to warn you, unless there is some very interesting opportunity for shared risk/reward and a joint-venture, I might not come very cheap. But on the other hand, you get what you pay for: the very top-end of the market, and someone who lives, breathes and eats what he does..

I will be leaving my current project at the end of this month, as my contract is up and I have decided not to extend. As a consequence I am keeping one eye on the contract market.

What annoys me immensely every time I look for contracts is the amount of recruitment agents and agencies that are just CV farming and fishing for leads, and who actually don’t have any actual suitable roles for you, nor will they have any. It is a waste of time. Now, I don’t mind at all keeping lines open to recruiters even if there is no role live at the current time, it is always helpful to build what may be mutually beneficial relationships in the long term. But, nonetheless, there are a lot of agents and agencies up to some very dodgy tricks. Basically they have a few motivations:

• CV Farming: some agencies have screwed up incentives, paying their employees for the number of CV’s they get. This means they just farm CV’s with no intention of ever using them for anything else than getting a quick commission.
• CV Farming 2: Some agencies do CV farming as a practice, to be able to tell their potential clients that they have “2000 highly attractive CV’s in their database” or some variation of that. Time wasters.
• Lead fishing: these will be the people who call you up, who quickly turn the conversation from their potential “role” for you, into asking what managers you worked for on your previous contract, or asking for “references” before you have even been put forward. Basically they want the names of people who have used contractors in the past, so they can approach these and try to get some new business.

The agents up to these tricks more often than not do not have any actual role to put you forward to, and if you have been in the industry for a few years it is childs play to pick up on when they are trying to play these tricks. Let me give you some hints at when they have no role, and no intention of ever getting you a role:

• They are arrogant on the phone: make no mistake, an agent that has a role for you, or an agent who works more long-term and thinks a contact between the two of you may be beneficial in the long-term will be friendly, accommodating and obviously try to actually understand your background and preferences. Arrogance or someone being generally “short” is a surefire sign he has no interest in you now or in the future. You are just a CV to add to the farm, or a sucker to pump for sales leads, nothing more. He doesn’t think he needs you.
• Generally non-specific about the role: If the agent avoids questions and is generally non-specific about an advertised role, while at the same time trying to turn the conversation in other directions, you can be pretty sure there is no role. If the agent claims he will put you forward for a role, but doesn’t actually tell or want to tell you the client, he is probably lying. If you are interesting enough to be put forward, it should swing both ways: you’d want to know what the organization is and whether you want to do work for them.
• You’re a perfect fit, but they won’t call you back: I usually give agents a call a while after sending a CV, just to get their attention. If on face value you look like a perfect fit and it shows in your CV, and if they are not available at that time, you leave a message and they don’t call back. Well, there probably is no role, or the agent is generally incompetent. If you are a good fit to what has been advertised, there is an actual role, and you’ve presented it well in your CV, you can be sure a competent agent will be on the phone to you before he has finished reading your CV!

Its funny that agencies and agents are up to these tricks, because I find it hard to believe they fool anyone but the people who have only ever had two or three contracts. Some of the worst ones actually make used car salesmen seem professional..

With all this moaning, I’d still like to point out that there are good agencies around, and they are usually quite easy to spot once you’ve come across them, so my tip for any contractor is to keep a list of these agencies and your contacts there once you’ve made them, they will be valuable in the future.

One of the favourite past-times contractors have when they get together is to share stories and moan about useless recruitment agencies and agents, sometimes deservedly so. The recruitment and headhunting business has quite a few shady elements, and a lot of people in the industry have both questionable business ethics and somewhat limited skills to say the least. That being said, there are still good agencies and good people in the industry: personally I keep what I call a “black list” and a “white list”: agencies I will not deal with under any circumstances, and “preferred” agencies and agents that are the first ports of call whenever I am looking for a contract.

With all of this said, there is one interesting difference to note between the UK and the rest of Europe: the UK has a much more living, vibrant and mature market for contractors compared to most other European countries (perhaps only Switzerland aside). The main difference between how the market functions in the UK and the rest of Europe? The UK has had the agency system for long, whereas most other European countries see most companies advertise their vacant roles themselves. Considering the costs of the latter option, these vacancies will be permanent employments most of the time, rather than temporary contracts for specialized skills.

See the pattern? The recruitment agents and agencies in the UK are the chasers, the wheeler-dealers and the brokers of the market. They are the equivalent of the stock-brokers, fund managers et al in the financial markets: their jobs may not always be appreciated, and some of them may employ questionable methods, yet they serve an important function in the market, they provide the market “liquidity” by matching supply with demand and making people move, providing the most efficient resource allocation in the market in the long-term.

So the moral of the story is: even the “useless”, unethical agencies serve some purpose, by making the market move.
Obviously the agencies that are truly unethical and incompetent will be “rewarded” accordingly: if they manage to stay in business to begin with, all they will move is low-grade, low-paying and low-margin contracts that they will have to spend a lot of effort chasing in the first place, since a lot of clients and contractors will avoid them in the long term.
At the same time the agencies who are competent and ethical in their behavior will be rewarded with higher end, higher margin contracts, while enjoying high levels of repeat business and continued relationships with a high quality pool of contractors: I keep the lines open to agencies I trust, and so does every other contractor that I know (and as you might have guessed, we contractors do swap notes..).