Contractors Tricks
Agencies claim to be the victims of contractors tricks.
Several agents have written to us about dirty tricks that contractors supposedly get up to. This article is a composite of their replies.
Contractors’ Dirty Tricks
1. Contractor’s lie when you ask them what their previous rate was. It would be more honest of them to say that they think that this is irrelevant and then quote the rate that they want. Few of them do this though – they just lie through their teeth.
2. When you’ve got contractors a job at the rate that they quoted, they make all sort of excuses for not signing the contract and sending it back. You know they are waiting for the results of another interview, but they seldom say so. Contractors are not strong on honesty and integrity though, and they find it easier and more natural to, shall we say, obfuscate.
3. Many contractors, if they do get a better offer, will take it, even though they’ve just signed a contract with you. Contracts mean nothing to them. It’s just a bean count for them. They’re just greedy. The real bastards don’t even tell you that they’ve taken another contract. They just don’t turn up to start the contract that you’ve just got them. This is totally unprofessional.
4. When you get them a contract, many of them try to re-negotiate after they’ve started their contract – even though they had agreed the rate before they started. Often it is the rate that they originally asked for.
Ungrateful Contractors
5. Many of them are ungrateful to you, despite the fact that you got them the job in the first place. They slag you and your agency off to your client behind your back. This often results in lost opportunities for you, and may even cost you the client. Contractors are the biggest bunch of whingers you could meet.
6. Everyone must know contractors who just disappear without trace during the middle of a contract. Everyone knows that they’ve just found a better paying job elsewhere. It’s embarrassing for the agency and very unprofessional. The missing contractor usually leaves the answerphone on and doesn’t reply to emails. I’m sometimes tempted to contact the police to locate the ‘missing person’.
7. Most of them won’t give you leads even though it could help you to get their fellow contractors work.
8. They rat on each other. If agencies ask them about other contractors, on most occasions they’ll run their fellow contractors down.
9. Then there’s the contractors who go back to the client direct, even though there’s a clause in their contract that says that they can’t contact the client within a year of finishing their contract. Some of them don’t even wait to leave before they steal your client. I’ve had one who said he was just visiting old friends when the switchboard put me through to his extension.
10. Contractors reek of unprofessionalism. They normally look scruffy in front of your client, they get in late, they slag off your client’s employees and they’re sometimes rude to your client, especially when they’re drinking in the pub with him. They always know how to do everything better than he does.
What do you think? Are agencies victims of contractors tricks?
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