Contractor Contacts Fishing
One of the oldest tricks in the book that agencies use is contractor contacts fishing.
We provide a series of 6 articles about hitting agents for six, i.e. understanding their dirty tricks and hitting agents successfully. Indeed, hitting agents hard is not so difficult when you know what they are up to.
One of the oldest tricks or tactics (depending on what side of the fence that you are sitting) is when the agency calls to say that they want to put your CV forward to some companies, but they would like you to tell you which companies your CV has been forwarded to already, so that there is not the embarrassment of your CV appearing at the same company twice, causing the company to reject you immediately.
The reason that the agent is asking this question is purely to find out which other companies are hiring, so that they can put someone on their books up against you.
Spamming Contacts
You can say that you’re not keen to tell them as a matter of confidentiality which jobs you have been put forward to, but they will be like a ferreting animal that has sniffed a grub buried deep and they will start digging furiously.
You might feel some temptation to give them some abuse for this obvious tactic. However, the best things is just to say that no one has put you forward for any other interviews.
What can they do then?
Say that they don’t believe you and infer that you are lying?
Cold Callers
Usually the agents cold calling are not the same agents who will get you a contract. They are the ones who are trying to find out where the contracts are and who is hiring contractors at this time.
Hitting agents for six is not so difficult when you understand what they are up to and why.
Contractor contacts fishing is one of the techniques that they use.
This is the 2nd of a series of articles about hitting agents for six.
So, you’ve hit this one out of the park then.
Read the first one in the series – Hitting Agencies for Six – Agency Tricks.
So in Hitting agents for six Part 1 you tell contractors not to believe the agent is going act as their agent and just abuse them – so in essence – act un-ethically and get as many agents acting for you for the same role. In this episode – you say that the cold callers are usually the ones that won’t get you the contract?!? If as a Ltd Co business owner you act in an un-ethical manner word spreads and the ONLY agents you will have calling you will be NEW ONES because the old ones that tried to build a business relationship with you will get fed up with the way you conduct yourself.
Business ethics and acting professionally go a long way in this industry. I for one will only ever ask a contractor about where they have FAILED to secure a contract where they interviewed recently. Gaining business intelligence that allows me to place one of my contractors somewhere benefits contractors as a whole because it keeps the wheels of this indusry moving.