Contractor’s Spring Newsletter

Inside…

• More job ads – how?
• Registration-of-Interest ads – what are they?
• getstaffed emails – controlling ‘em
• The community – you’re in great company

Is it Spring yet?

Not sure what’s it’s been like at your place, but the unflappable getstaffed team have been freezing here in Wellington. Still, all the cold weather is just great for lifting the hood and doing some work in the getstaffed engine. So, here’s what we’ve been up to.

New Job Advertisers

We are partnering with bunch of hand-picked recruitment firms to allow them to advertise contract roles at getstaffed.com. These will generally be the recruiters who get a good rap over at Rate My Agency.

We’re doing this beause we want to pull out all the stops to help you find the best contract. Our current hiring business tend to prefer to search the database for your profile, so partnering with the top recruiters will help create a vacancy ads that let you know what’s out there.

When business or recruiter advertisers post a job, we’ll send a jobs alert email to all getstaffed members who have a job skills match, and who are flagged as ‘Available’. We know it’s a pain having to trawl job boards looking for fresh opportunities – so the idea is that we’ll bring them to you directly.

Note that recruiters will not be able to search to the getstaffed database, so they won’t be able to contact you unless you respond to a job ad. Once you respond your profile will go onto a shortlist and they can get in touch.

ROI Advertisments

We are introducing a new Registration-of-Interest service. An ROI allows our getstaffed business to advertise a new project before it’s officially launched, and for you to express interest in getting involved. This differs from regular job ads, which must be created for a specific role that is confirmed and ready to be filled… hopefully by you!

ROI’s works much the same as a regular ad, and the advertiser can ask for a range of skills covering those likely for the project. We’re hoping that this can help projects start more efficiently.. so your contract can start sooner.

Email Management

We recently introduced some options to allow you to control which emails you receive, and how often. Most of these options allow you to set explicit minimum periods between emails. For example you may want to be contacted about new job opportunities no more often that once a fortnight, or once a month.

The only regularly scheduled email we have to send you is the availability email. This is so that your availability status is always up-to-date, which is critical part of you publishing your profile to prospective clients.

We’ve put together a flow diagram of the Availability Email mechanism which describes how and when these important emails are sent.

If you are working a contract then just click ‘Not Available’ link in the email. You’ll be taken to a landing page where you can enter the date when your contract finishes. We won’t send any more availability emails until close to that time.

Oh, and we also give away movie tickets each week to someone who has updated their getstaffed availability.

Your Community

The getstaffed community now includes more than 1550 registered contractors, and it’s growing all the time as you and other getstaffed members tell colleagues about us.

We’re grateful for you doing this as it has helped getstaffed become the largest most up-to-date pool of IT contractors in New Zealand.

Greg and I remain totally committed to helping you find the best contracts.

Falling off the edge of the world

 

It was once believed that sailing far enough across the ocean would risk the ship and it’s crew falling off the edge of the world. Indeed if the sailing ship didn’t return for months, those on land assumed that this had happened. It was assumed that contact had been permanently lost, the sailing ship was unaccounted for, never to return.

We’re a bit more savvy these days, but the concept of falling of the edge of the world lives on in a new context.  It is this:-

If your email address stops working Greg and I have lost contact with you. We can’t send availability emails – a critical part of allowing you to publish your availability for new contracts. We can’t let you know when new jobs which match your profile are advertised. All that, and getstaffed hiring managers won’t be able to get in touch via email about roles that they’ve headhunted your for. Not good

So… if our emails to you bounce then we’ll probably have to delete your profile, meaning you’ll need to re-join at a later date. Normally we’d email you to let you know this was happening.. but, well, not possible in this instance!  We know this is a pain, but we have to ensure that all contractor are readily contactable and having a working email address is the key to this.

A few suggestions to help you stay connected and well placed for new roles:-

1. Make sure you use a personal email addressfor your getstaffed account, rather than any in-work email address which are likely to vanish if/when you move from one company to another
2. Log in every few weeks or months to check your profile. This is great time to request more testimonials, update your CV and to check your getstaffed points balance if you’ve been earning or redeeming these.

Speaking of email …

Cool new email opt in/out

 

 

Greg has added some cool new email opt-in/out features. Log in and check out your account page. We’re going to continue to enhance this, but it’s a start!

our movie ticket giveaway…

I like movies. And I like going to the theatre to watch them. So, we at getstaffed are giving away movie tickets!

I remember once, I had been contracting through a recruitment agency for nearly a year. Their margin was $25/hr, so about $1000/wk. So quite a bit of money over a year. And at the end of the year, having made nearly $50,000 in margin, they sent me … 2 movie tickets.

Whee.

I guess its the thought that counts!

So when we started getstaffed, Andrew and I talked about how we wanted to reflect accurately the roles of the main participants in the getstaffed equation. Those main participants are, a) our members, b) our hiring businesses, and … right at the back, last and least… Andrew and I. We want to be a low-touch, simple, method of getting people jobs, and filling positions. We don’t want to be ‘in the middle’, because… we don’t think we can add that much value.

And this week, since things have been going pretty well recently, with more placements and interest, we launched our first getstaffed update movie ticket giveaway. We are giving away 2 movie tickets to anyone who has updated their profile, availability, cvs etc, in the last week. 2 movie tickets, the same prize I got at the end of my year-long contract. Odds are pretty good, since people only update availability at most every 2 weeks.

We think thats pretty cool, and hope you guys do too.

market picking up?

we’ve recently been seeing a burst of activity in the market, as businesses look for cheaper ways to recruit contract staff. This is great news for getstaffed, and we’ve been talking with a lot of people discussing how the getstaffed model can fit their business. We’ve also been talking with government, after having almost given up there. Discussions have been positive, and we’ve put together a unique proposal for government. I’m not holding my breath, but theres some interest there, so we will see if we can convince it to come out and play!

We’ve also been talking to some more traditional recruitment companies (but only the best ones!) to find out where it makes sense for us to support them, and for them to support us, because we really, really want to get everyone jobs, so we are working on innovative ways to make sure we do that. We’re trying new things,  and its pretty exciting times. We will probably make mistakes (more mistakes, we’re good at mistakes!) but as Michael Jordan said…

Its exciting times! And … its becoming warmer. The market is picking up, life is good!

Where has the year gone?

So a quick update, since there hasnt been an update here for a while!

Ok, quick update:

getstaffed has over 1500 members, but we are still struggling to get big companies to use us. We think its simply because our primary offering (ie, super-super cheap recruitment) is not hitting the buttons of the HR staff in those companies. Smaller companies tend to have HR staff that are much more aligned with where the company is at. Its a difficult one for us to solve, but Im just going to keep annoying them!

So most of the companies regularly using getstaffed are smaller companies. Air NZ is currently trialling us, and they have already grabbed one contractor. Slick work there! Did you see the job ad they put up? No, me neither, because they did what lots of people do, and just searched and contacted (and contracted!) Steve. We do ask them to put up an ad, but… hmm.

So getstaffed is ticking over. Small changes, I’ve stuck up the latest searches that companies are doing, so you at least know theres something going on, some mods to look and feel, inclusion of the available date on the profile page, that sort of thing.

I just got back from a crazy trip, and Andrew has just gone on one. And I will try and post more often!

Merry new year!

Well, 2009 is here, wheres my hover car?

A bit of a getstaffed 2008 recap…

2008 was our first more or less mostly full time on getstaffed time, and we started off pretty slow, me (Greg) doing some site improvements and Andrew rustling up business while juggling other balls. Our numbers of contractors started shooting up, and our signed up businesses started going up more slowly.

We even started placing a few people, and giving everyone getstaffed points, which later gave some of our contractors free trips to places like… Auckland, Rarotonga and Europe. Yay!

But…. on the downside, businesses are still reluctant to use us. Initially, we started off with a “build the website, take off to tahiti” mentality, but ended with a “We’ll help you with that” slant, as we worked out most of our big businesses were not really motivated too much by the thought of saving thousands a week (for some, tens of thousands). So we moved more into a full service, low cost model, but still struggled with trying to change the way businesses have been doing things. We are getting known around town, and mixing up the status quo with things like www.ratemyagency.co.nz. That one was only a few days work, but it really … um… educated… some people out there!

We still havent found the ideal mixing point for getstaffed, as you can see by the lack of jobs! So we will be trying some new initiatives this year to try and cement getstaffed as the place to hire IT contractors. Thanks for all of your excellent support and comments and suggestions, hope you all had a great christmas and new year!

cheers

Greg and Andrew

October Newsletter

As you may have noticed, this blog is a bit-of-a tumbleweed zone. So I thought I’d post up our latest hiring manager newsletter…. hey anything for a bit of content!

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getstaffed Hiring Manager Newsletter, 15-October-2008

Regional Rate Variations
In this newsletter we take a quick look at regional variations in IT contract rates. Want to know which skills cost more in Auckland, and which cost more in Wellington? Then this newsletter should help.

I read somewhere recently that the public service in Wellington has grown by 13 hectares in the last 9 years! This is a measure of the additional floor space taken up by expanding government agencies. More floor space, demonstrating more demand should, in theory, see increased rates.

So I thought it might be interesting to analyse the rate information supplied by getstaffed contractors. I wasn’t prepared for the size of the rate disparity as shown below.

Skills shortage?
If your recruitment agency cites a ‘skills shortage’ as reason for the difficulty in filling a role then you may be justified in being a little skeptical. The table below shows the most commonly sought IT contractor skills registered with getstaffed, as at 22-Oct-2008

Skill Keyword	Total registered	Available Now	Contracted	Availability Rate
J2EE	62	9	53	17%
XML	56	9	47	19%
Java	133	22	111	20%
ASP .Net	63	11	52	21%
C#	118	21	97	22%
Project Manager	150	33	112	22%
Business Analyst	72	14	58	24%
.Net	103	21	82	26%
Oracle	61	13	48	27%
Linux	87	19	68	28%
SQL	138	31	107	29%
Testing	69	17	52	33%
Javascript	58	15	43	35%
HTML	85	25	60	42%
PHP	57	18	39	46%

As you can see, getstaffed lists plenty of independent contractors available right now. J2EE skills are in-demand while PHP skills are more easy to secure. Feel free to log in anytime to find contractors and review their on-line profiles.

How could we …
… make getstaffed a more valuable resource for your business?

The contractor community now has almost 1100 skilled independent professionals and we’re sure that the right people for your project needs are there for you. Despite the size and value of the community we not seeing the level of login/search/ad-placement activity that we would expect.

So Greg and I must be doing something wrong(ish). Do you have any suggestions? We would really really like your feedback.

Thanks!
Thanks for being part of the getstaffed community. It’s great to have you aboard

Regards,
Andrew (one of the ‘getstaffed guys‘)

PS. Remember to send us your contract vacancy listings… so that you can find the right contractors, at the right price, right now.

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Feel free to contact us anytime.  Still keen to use an agency? Check out the community feedback at Rate My Agency!

@ Get Staffed Limited

ah, spring!

Spring is here! I feel it!

I’ve been a bit disconnected recently, with Andrew taking over most of the selling work and me just doing a few updates to the site. I’m blaming winter which normally has a slightly depressing impact, and now that spring is here, I’ve got a good feeling!

getstaffed is starting to pick up, both in terms of business involvement and placement activity. We are getting more jobs up, which is great because they were unsolicited, meaning the companies involved put them up without Andrew or I harassing them. And we’re getting a good number of responses so hopefully some more placements happening.

I mentioned in a previous post how people were looking at getstaffed and not seeing many jobs, because we only advertise real existing jobs, and we expire them every two weeks. Hopefully we are going to be picking up more real jobs as we head into spring. Andrew has been busy contacting CIO’s in Auckland and Wellington, and we’ve had several really informative meetings, including, who would have thought?!?, a meeting with a large (really large) government department.

So with a bit of luck and some prodding, we might prise open the conservative doors of government.

And www.ratemyagency.co.nz has gone really well, and we’re getting a good feel for the state (not so good!) of the IT recruitement industry in New Zealand.

With the coming of spring, and fwuffy bunny wabbits and bouncy lambies, I’ll be posting more often, keeping everyone up-to-date with getstaffed goings on! viva la revolucion!

if I had a dollar…

for all the times I heard…”Greg, hi, you’re from getstaffed right…? Um, I was wondering….”

Where are all the jobs?!?

Hmm. What we really want is a million jobs, that you guys can all choose from. I’m talking about real jobs, not ‘registrations of interest’ or ‘projects that will be starting …’ or ‘oh sorry, that project has been cancelled’ jobs.

This is getstaffeds biggest problem. Our hiring companies prefer to search, and contact our members directly. I can understand why, its just easier. No hassle with approval,  etc., just search, contact the people, and get them on if there is an opportunity. Which is how getstaffed is meant to work, but it doesn’t look like much is happening on the site.

And… we’re not that big. Hiring companies are getting used to the concept of paying $3/hour rather than … quite a lot more than that! We’re looking at hiring some more people to speed things up, because theres a lot of companies, and just Andrew and I at the moment.

Weve also got some plans to let you contact businesses when they are searching, so you can actually get in touch directly with the companies, which is the whole point of getstaffed. We need to run those ideas past some of our businesses first, but we will let you guys know!

cheers

Greg

RateMyAgency

RateMyAgency is now live! We all have good and bad stories about different recruitment agents, the ones who understand, the ones who don’t, the ones that can’t even remember when your contract is ending, and many people are looking for a ‘good’ recruiter.

Now we think getstaffed is the best way to go, but we’re still starting up. And there will always be a requirement to deal with recruiters in our industry. So, how do you find a good one?

RateMyAgency lets people put in comments and ratings on any recruitment agency, so you can see at a glance the ones people have had good (and bad) experiences with.

Send the link to anyone and everyone, and we will send the feedback to recruiters when we get enough data.

Cheers

Greg