Client2Consultant was founded by a freelance Chartered Quantity Surveyor frustrated with the status quo maintained by old fashioned middle men receiving exorbitant cuts for simply passing the Consultants CV on to the end Client.
In a modern internet world where direct access to the Client should be so much easier this scenario should no longer be an issue.
However it still is the case with middle men understandably eager to maintain the status quo and continue to reap considerable profits.
As a Consultant I had tried to find websites that facilitate such a “meeting place” between Client and Consultant but they do not exist.
Ones that claim to provide such a service charge hefty signing up fees and do not provide the direct contact and environment I was looking for.
This is where C2C was born. No charge for Client or Consultant to sign up.
The end result is a place that facilitates the meeting of Clients with Consultants directly so they are able to move swiftly and easily to forming a working consultancy agreement at fair rates for both.
From personal experience of working in many freelance roles for different end Clients I have found that in order to get to the Client I have been through a “pass the parcel” process of contact with an intermediary, then often onto a second intermediary or approved firm that may have a contractual arrangement with the end Client.
Speaking from personal experience in 90% of cases no checks on background, PI insurance, references or interviews are carried out by the middle men themselves.
Generally the end Client is the first to speak to the freelance Consultant in any depth and is almost always the first one to see them face to face.
This is despite the claims of many top intermediary organisations (“middle men”) who promise to the Client that they always carry out face to face interviews and background checks.
THE REPUTABLE CONSULTANCY COMPANY
There are some excellent and highly reputable Consultancy Firms who provide high quality Commercial, Planning and Project Management support for Construction projects.
Client2Consultant also treats these reputable organisations as an end “Client”.
These organisations typically consist largely of permanent employees and often contract less than 25% of their overall resource base through independent freelance “Consultants”.
Client2Consultant is key for these firms and provides a partnering arrangement allowing them to compliment their solid resource base of permanent employees with a supply of independent freelance “Consultants” allowing all important flexibility to ride the traditionally significant peaks and troughs of the construction industry.
THE “PSEUDO” CONSULTANCY COMPANY
Admittedly there are also many intermediary organisations who describe themselves as Consultancy Companies but are effectively “middle men” consisting largely of contracted independent Consultants.
These Consultancy Companies have long standing professional service agreements with end Clients providing much of the resource for their project teams.
In such cases and in my experience the end Client is unaware that many of the Consultants representing the Consultancy Company are in fact freelance and independent, whatsmore there is little or no contact or support from the Consultancy Company.
In such cases the Consultant has already passed through a further level of middle men beneath the Consultancy Company.
The rate increasing at each stage as they are passed on. The name of the Consultancy Company is effectively meaningless.
The Consultant despite having had a telephone interview and/or face to face interview with the intermediaries is still interviewed by the end Client’s project team leaders.
If interviews and checks are held by the end Client anyway then why is the middle man required?
The reality is they are not however until now there has not been a simple way for the Client to go direct to a Consultant
