Agency Tricks on Contractors
Agencies have been getting away with too many dirty agency tricks for too long.
Some agents, commenting previous articles said that these were just the ‘tricks of the trade‘. They say and that other contractors benefit from them.
Agency Tricks – It‘s Cheating – Not Tricks
What they don‘t say is that they are using lies, deception and downright cheating to do such things as obtain leads from contractors whilst pretending that they might have a job for them. This is not only deceitful, it is cruel as well.
Why don‘t they try first to get an IT contractor a job, and then honestly and openly ask them to help them get jobs for other contractors by supplying them with leads?
Most contractors will help IT agents who help them – especially if it helps other contractors.
It is only fair to say that other, more honest, agents, decried the tactics used by some of their less straightforward brethren.
Time for Code of Conduct
It is time for an effective industry wide IT Agency Code of Conduct. Most contractors and agents must know about them and adhere to them as well.
Agents‘ representatives, Apsco, actually have a Code of Conduct and a disciplinary procedure. However, this is seldom used, as it is little know. Also, there must be suspicions on the part of contractors about Agencies policing themselves. REC has one as well.
I don‘t necessarily hold those fears, as many of the agents doing these agency tricks are doing them without the knowledge of their directors. May of them are rogue agents and if caught would be discipline by Apsco or their own companies.
Not Working
However, the ‘agency tricks‘ are happening too often for it to claim that any Code of Conduct or disciplinary procedure is working.
There are too few ‘prosecutions‘ of offenders to be able to say that the Code of Conduct is working effectively.
It is to the disadvantage of fair and honest agents if it allows their ‘rogue‘ brethren to get competitive advantage on them. How can the industry expect them to remain fair and honest when the industry is allowing the rogues to have a head start on the honest ones?
This state of affairs has been going on too long. The practices (or ‘agency tricks‘) are a blight on the industry.
This country has the best represented contractors in the world – when they are facing Government.
It‘s about time that contractors‘ representatives and representatives of the major agencies got round the table to create a Code of Conduct for relationships between IT agents and IT contractors – and it should be a two-way affair.
Agency Tricks should be done away with.
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