If you are looking for work in the building industry you might want to
try an agency. This is a list of some that have finally joined the
computer age if not the present century. (It IS another world, believe
me.)

They will ask for personal details and some sort of checkable history.
Hays for example, is or was crap but they wanted a passport and/or a
birth certificate just to tell you they have no vacancies. Some of them
are fairly good but you have to be in the frame to get a start.

If you do go the route I suggest you stick with them until they run out
of work. A good agent will try to keep a man on his books and find him
continual work. There is very little loyalty in a land full of
neanderthals though.

Here is the first decent link I have found in a long time looking:
http://www.agencycentral.co.uk/agenc...killsearch.htm

In article .com,
Weatherlawyer wrote:
If you do go the route I suggest you stick with them until they run out
of work. A good agent will try to keep a man on his books and find him
continual work. There is very little loyalty in a land full of
neanderthals though.

I'm not sure. I'm a freelance, though not in the building trade and did
try an agency once. They didn't offer me any quality work and after fees
worked out rather expensive all in all. So I built up my own client base.
And the sort of client I work for generally doesn't contact an agency for
freelances, but uses the 'old boy' network throughout the industry. It
would take a long time for an agency to build the reputation for supplying
the right person for the job.
IMHO, if you work on your own for private individuals, satisfied customers
will pass on your details to friends - and all for free. ;-)

--
*I used up all my sick days so I called in dead

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article .com,
Weatherlawyer wrote:

If you do go the route I suggest you stick with them until they run out
of work. A good agent will try to keep a man on his books and find him
continual work. There is very little loyalty in a land full of
neanderthals though.

I'm not sure. I'm a freelance, though not in the building trade and did
try an agency once. They didn't offer me any quality work and after fees
worked out rather expensive all in all.

So I built up my own client base.
And the sort of client I work for generally doesn't contact an agency for
freelances, but uses the 'old boy' network throughout the industry. It
would take a long time for an agency to build the reputation for supplying
the right person for the job.

IMHO, if you work on your own for private individuals, satisfied customers
will pass on your details to friends - and all for free. ;-)

This was a tip for anyone considering chancing his arm and not knowing
where to start. Most site agents have been in the business all their
lives and are well into their forties and fifties. They are usually
highly skilled craftsmen. They can soon spot a dud.

If they are busy they may look after him but give him simple but crappy
jobs to do. I once got sent miles away for a weeks work and it turned
out they had a team start on that job from somewhere else so they gave
me a job making steps for the site hut to give me a days work. They
could have just sent me home.

Obviously you will get the dregs that no-one else wants at first while
they get to know you. With agents, they have to keep their best men in
work or they will lose them. And they can not vouch to their clients
for the quality of the men they send out until they know what their
work is like and how good they are at time keeping.

It's all done on respect and word of mouth. If it turns out you are
unreliable or not very good they won't find you much work or send you
to their busiest clients. They have to find the work and they take a
small cut from your wages.

The alternative is to find your own work. But you can only do that
locally. In this game you may have to travel some distance to get the
work. And probably pass someone going to work for another agency on the
way who is going where you live and coming from where you are working.

It would be nice if you could swap. That sort of thing isn't catered
for in their logistics.

Some agents are good some are dross. Hays isn't very good. Another one
here a few years back was offering me two quid less than the going rate
and couldn't believe I wanted a lot more.

Another time I jumped down off a roof in an hurry to answer my phone
and fell through the scaffolding and it was an agency offering me the
national minimum wage. If I hadn't broken my ribs I'd have laughed till
I cried. So I just cried instead.

Generally the larger cities have the better rates.But sometimes you
drop on some nice work locally It all varies like the weather. It's
surprising though, how similar the rates are all over the country.

As it happens I like working for agencies. You can make more money on
price-work and agencies prefer to pay by the hour so the agent can get
his cut. But I just like to plod on rather than race through the day.
I'm too old for that.

I get to meet all sorts and learn a little here and there, or some odd
times even offer advice to others.