

"So you want to go freelance..." - a beginners guide to freelancing - mocko
http://mocko.org.uk/b/2010/10/11/so-you-want-to-go-freelance/

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kls
All good advice but my experience with agents has been slightly different.
Sure a lot of them are hollow shells, but I give them my rate, some of them
are successful in negotiating their fees on top of the client and I have
gotten a fair amount of work from agencies.

I would not discount them entirely just don't spend a lot of time chasing
their lead and doing prep work for them to represent you and stay firm on your
rate. A good deal will fall through but you can find some gems this way. A lot
of large corps use agents to find freelancers and have exclusive contracting
arraignments with the agency.

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cletus
Having freelanced in London, I can say, if anything, the author is
_understating_ just how bad agents are there.

Everything is rosy when times are good. When work is plentiful and qualified
workers are in short supply agents are your friends. But having lived through
the IT recession in the early 2000s in the UK, I can tell you that there's a
whole other side to that coin.

In 2003 the unemployment rate amongst self-identified contractors was 39%.
THIRTY NINE PERCENT. And that didn't include those that had left the industry,
taken permanent jobs or retrained (many as plumbers for some reason).

In this environment the agents are the worst enemies of both the contractors
and the companies.

Some things worth knowing:

\- When a job is officially posted, many companies will have PSLs (preferred
supplier lists). These are 5 or so agents who they will source all their
contractors from. For this reason alone you need to spread yourself around a
few. Deutsche Bank's set of 5 might be completely different to, say, CSFB;

\- Often the PSLs will be able to submit a quota of CVs, often 2. 2 x 5 = 10
CVs to review. This has some unfortunate side effects, namely _you have no
idea if you've actually been submitted for a job or not_. Let me explain:

\- When you respond to an ad, the agent will typically filter you through some
basic questions (of which he or she typically has no clue regarding the
correctness of your answers but, hey, if you sound confident you must be
right). After that they will say they will submit you. They may even be
telling the truth at that point. Or they might be lying. If they say they
won't put you forward you'll go through someone else and how embarrassing
would that be if they turned you down and you got the job through someone
else? Better to sideline you in favour of a candidate that looks better on
paper;

\- Even if they intend to put you up, a better candidate may come in before
the submission deadline. Will they tell you they're no longer submitting you?
Not at all. They'll simply quiet drop you, effectively sidelining you;

\- If companies get the same CV from multiple sources that will often kill
your application as the company doesn't want the fight with the various agents
as to who is entitled to the commission;

\- Before a hiring manager or line manager even sees your CV it has to make it
through HR (in large companies). HR has no idea what your technical CV means.
They simply scan it for known keywords and acronyms. The result? You have to
fill your CV with acronyms to pass this filter.

Example: I once told an agent I had 5 years of Java experience. He said
(literally) "that's great but do you have any J2SE experience?" I'M NOT MAKING
THIS UP.

\- When times are lean (and even when they're not) recruiters will proactively
recruit for managers they know. To do this they will tell the prospective
candidate the position is live. 90% of the time this is a waste of your time.

Many (but not all) companies use job reference numbers for live positions. You
need to learn which companies do and which don't. You can ask for this. If the
agent is cagey about giving this information or they say the company doesn't
use this when you know they do, just hang up. They're wasting your time.

But some positions are basically filled before they officially become live.
Line managers need to wait for approval for hires, budget and so on. Like
anything, once it's all official they need someone yesterday. Some will try to
expedite the process before filling the position before it's official so you
need to walk a tightrope here between wasting your time and missing out on
good opportunities. This will come down to your relationship with the agent
but it is so hard to figure out if someone is full of it or not;

\- Agents set up fake interviews to make it look like they're getting things
done for you. They day before (or even the same day) they'll cancel the
interview saying something has come up. Do yourself a favour: if this happens,
ring the company and speak to the person involved. This may be hard to do as
agents are there to shield them from direct contact but persevere. Some will
care but many won't. At least you can figure out if the agent is full of it or
not;

\- Agents advertise fake positions to harvest CVs;

\- Agents will submit you without your permission. I've had my CV turn up for
the same job from 5 different agents (literally). That killed the position for
me through no fault of my own;

\- Agents will want CVs in Word format. This is partly for convenience but
also they will often change things. You could mitigate this by sending a
protected PDF CV for each position. Some will drop you if you create this
hassle for them but if you want to control who sends out your CV, it may be
worthwhile;

\- You have no control of the markup the agent will charge on top of what they
pay you. Combined with a lack of technical expertise, the agent may hurt you
in this regard without you being able to do anything about it.

Let's say your market rate is 400 pounds/day. If that's too close to the
maximum the agent might not put you up even though you're the best candidate.
They simply won't make the margin they want.

Or you can go in with a low quote because you're not entirely suited to the
job or its a company you really want to work for. The agent may mark you way
up anyway, putting you out of the running. They can do this simply because
they don't know your deficiencies for that application.

Honestly I could go on. Contracting in London for me was an horrific,
anarchic, soul-destroying experience. Recruitment is one of those industries
in the UK in drastic need of regulation to stop these shenanigans.

~~~
tyn
Many thanks for sharing all this. Since you seem to know how the UK agents
think, is locality of candidates a crucial factor for the agents? I live in
the continent and had little luck whenever applied for UK based contracts,
much more interest from the same UK agents when the contract position is based
in my country. Is there a workaround to this, given that I'm perfectly ok with
relocation?

~~~
cletus
UK agents definitely want easy. Either be in London or say you you are if
you're not but canget there quickly (eg eurostar from Paris).

There is a practical reason for this. Once a position can be filled it is
often filled very quickly. Getting a position can come down to who is
available right now. This can even hinge on whether someone can be reached by
phone that afternoon.

Also if you have a choice of interview slot, pick the earliest you can, later
interviews will often get cancelled if a suitable candidate is found earlier.
Companies don't want to waste time.

I got a job once that caused the next TWO DAYS of Interviews to be cancelled.
This came down to being reachable by mobile phone and having access to a fax
machine (this was 2001).

------
Silhouette
Just to add a few extra data points, for those in the UK but outside London...

I've set up more than one small company, with various accountants. The typical
fee for a bespoke deal (customising things like share classes if you want)
always seems to work out around £300, one way or another. You could get a
limited company much cheaper, probably under £50, if you don't need anything
special and you're happy to buy one off the shelf and sort out all the
paperwork yourself.

(Pro tip: If occasionally dropping a few hundred pounds on good professional
services makes you wince, this is not the lifestyle for you. You need to
understand the value of your time, how much time it really takes to deal with
overheads, the real cost of getting official paperwork like contracts and
financial statements wrong, and the benefits of different kinds of
professional insurance and organisation memberships. Contractors charge much
more then employees per hour for good reasons, and one of those reasons is
that they have to deal with these overheads.)

IMHO, the tax and legal regulation isn't so bad, as long as you have a
reasonable accountant. Producing annual financial statements for a personal
contracting company shouldn't cost more than £1,000 unless you're
exceptionally busy, and even good accountants might charge closer to half of
that if you're only raising an invoice every few weeks and paying out
occasional dividends so there isn't much work for them to do. Filing the other
statutory paperwork and keeping track of the various deadlines is irritating
and does waste a few hours each year, but it doesn't require specialist
knowledge or skills you can't learn in an hour-long meeting with your
accountant.

(Pro tip: If you're worrying about whether you can keep business records
effectively and remember to file stuff, this is not the lifestyle for you. As
a freelancer, whether you are self-employed or a company director, you will be
legally responsible for getting this stuff right, and while most honest
mistakes can be fixed without incurring major penalties, you certainly do hear
about people who got it wrong and wound up paying tens of thousands in back
taxes.)

Contract rates outside London are significantly lower, but still far higher on
an hourly basis than working as an employee.

Some other general comments...

I second the recommendation in the article for PCG membership. To me, just
having access to templates for standard contracting documents and to the tax
and legal helplines was very useful when I first started out. There are also
some benefits in terms of insurance, either directly in some cases or where
membership gets you a discount with a third party on other professional
insurance policies you might want/need. And there is a lot of other generally
useful contracting advice to be had, forums that might help some people, etc.

The same does _not_ apply to many other professional bodies. As a general
rule, if membership costs a lot and lets you put letters after your name, but
it's not a genuine university awarding a recognised qualification, there is
about a 98% chance that it is a waste of money IME.

For finding work, recommendations/networking >> agencies. You probably know
some friends or former colleagues who do contract work if you've been in the
industry for a while, and they might well share potential opportunities if you
just tell them you're going freelance and ask.

Being able to choose your own hours (including how many of them you work in a
week) is a huge advantage to completely freelance work. There is no more
putting in silly hours without overtime pay because your megalomaniac boss
screwed up the project timescales and the deadline is coming up.

Working from home is both a blessing and a curse. It can be wonderful, but you
do need to consider basic things like setting up a proper office in a
dedicated room (particularly if you've got a partner/family) and how you're
going to interact with other real people if you're not getting out of the
house every day. Do check the implications for things like capital gains tax
and planning consents with someone who knows what they're talking about as
well.

Finally, as far as job security goes, I'm not convinced employment isn't a bit
of a con here. Sure, firing someone is relatively difficult in the UK, but not
if your company is going bust anyway, and with employment you're effectively
locked into working with a single serious employer, often on quite nasty terms
that interfere with or outright prohibit other commercial activities while not
guaranteeing you any career progression. Who really has more financial
security, the employee working for Big Employer (who lays off people 5,000 at
a time when the axe falls) or the freelance contractor who can take on two
contracts simultaneous, each using about half their time but with a different
client, and who has developed relationships with half a dozen clients who come
back with repeat business?

In a nutshell, if you're technically competent _and_ you are organised and
professional enough to deal with some basic business management, freelancing
can be an excellent career choice. I think far more people in many
technical/creative industries would choose to do it if they knew what it was
really like, and you find far more people who say they wish they'd made the
jump sooner than who give it up and went back to working for The Man. It isn't
for everyone, but I'd certainly encourage anyone who has wondered if it might
be for them to at least look into it properly.

