If you are considering becoming an IT Contractor in Canberra or have just been looking at the Job Boards for a new role you will have seen what appears to be the same role advertised by many different agencies.  

All the ads have the same job title, time fame and required skills and experience – and we bet you’re wondering why? 

Most contract roles in Canberra are with the Federal Government.  As they are spending the public’s money, they follow strict procurement guidelines to ensure that they approach the market competitively and are getting the best value for money. 

To achieve this, they work on what is know as Panel Arrangements.  These panels are established to provide a list of prequalified Recruitment Agencies and quite often can have hundreds of members. 

Each time a Federal Government client has a need for an IT Contract resource they will make an approach to the market through these panel arrangements – sometimes selecting only a few Recruitment Agencies to respond but very often making the opportunity available to all Recruitment Agencies on the panel. 

As a result, you will see many Recruitment Agencies advertising and calling on the same pool of available IT Contract resources and this is why you may be contacted by multiple agents too.   

So how do you choose who to work with? 

Having the contract available to you through multiple Federal Government recruitment company panel members means you can shop around the recruitment agencies that are all advertising the same contract position. If you ask each of them what their contractor fee margins are you will soon discover those who you would want to deal with and those who you most certainly don’t. 

Many ICT recruiters are trained by their employers to negotiate contractor pay rates down and negotiate client charge rates up, increasing their opportunity for their fee margin (the bit in between what the contractor gets paid and what the client is charged) however, at Recruitment Sorted, our fee structure and processes are an open book.  

We pride ourselves on honesty and transparency, and the contractors we work with always know what we are charging the client and the fees and charges in between. 

So the power is yours to choose who to work with and this doesn’t have to be committing to the first agent to contact you – you can choose to work with which ever agency you believe will provide you with the best service, and look after your interests. 

There is lots of job activity in the market at the moment so why not reach out to our team to find out more about rates in the Canberra IT Contract market, and to chat about our fees and charges and how they might see you receive a better rate!