How Transparent are Your Practices?
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Transparent: easily seen through, recognized or detected.
Take all of the same work styles of your current department and stick them in any other company. What's different? What's the same? It's easy to say that your co-workers are all different, but is your process different? How so?
I've worked for a few behemoths and they all seemed to have the same process, but different terms stamp their own corporate ownership on each. Face it, an interview is an interview, a client is a client and a job is a job. The million dollar answer is how much of your own process do you allow your candidates in to see? It's not a secret. If we, as professionals, think that our candidates don't know how we operation, we are dead wrong. They know more than we give them credit for.
Here's a blip of a blog (written by a candidate) I read recently:
| Paid to recruiting firm | $75.00 |
| Taken off the top for expenses (10 percent) | $7.50 $67.50 - sample corp. to corp. rate |
|
Liability adjustment (2 percent) |
$1.50 $66.00 - sample 1099 rate |
|
W2 expenses (10 percent) |
$7.50 $58.50 - sample W2 rate |
| Vacation (2 weeks per annum) |
$4.00 $54.50 - sample W2 rate with vacation |
| Paid Holidays |
$2.00 $52.50 - sample W2 rate with vacation and holidays |
These sample rates are actually fairly accurate for some companies and represent an OK level of "fairness." The markup on W2, in this example, is 28 percent ($75 is 128 percent of $58.50). While I did not completely plan it out, 28 percent is the "minimum" acceptable rate for at least one of the major recruiting firms I know. I have seen companies with lower overhead that have even dropped down in the 15-20 percent markup range. I have even had one contract where the recruiting firm lost money on my deal every time I worked overtime.
I've gone the extra step, when appropriate, to discuss rates with candidates for the sole purpose of assistance in the negotiation. "Our bill rate isn't as high as you are requesting in an hourly rate!" You'd be surprised how much respect that gains versus haggling for every dollar.
