On Fri, 2011-12-09 at 02:23 -0500, Avleen Vig wrote: > On Fri, Dec 9, 2011 at 2:10 AM, Aaron Trevena <aaron.trev...@gmail.com>wrote: [snip] > > At least here in the US, bypassing recruiters is the much preferred method. > I don't know why they're still so heavily relied on in the UK.
The agency does the legwork, saving both the company time in going through lots of CVs, and the contractor in having to trawl through hundreds of company web sites looking for jobs. The agency centralises the billing so that the company has to deal with fewer invoices at the end of the month. The agency smooths out the cash flow to the contractor. Large companies can take a very long time to pay an invoice. The agency insulates the company from many of the restrictions of employment law. As a contractor of 40+ years, I don't grudge them their 10%. When I started they used to take 37%+. Some things have improved.