The race to the bottom

We abhor the temporary IT staffing model common today; the prospective staff are
  1. sought on a last-minute basis
  2. filtered by misconfigured, mindless Applicant Tracking Systems
  3. hired by recruiters largely innocent of IT knowledge
  4. treated as virtual slaves by client companies
  5. frequently dismissed when they cannot conjure miracles
  6. frequently dismissed on a whim, or by mismanagement
  7. discarded, often with little or no notice, after the assignment
  8. treated with no regard for their well-being
This cruel system
This pernicious, awful system is slowly breaking down with time, and is sustained only because of power imbalances, inertia and indolence.

Granted, there are still a few conscientious companies and people working in the staffing industry, but the market noise generated by the less scrupulous, often very large players, drowns out the voices of experience and reason.

Consolidation in the industry (if you didn't know already, there are relatively few big players left, none with a commanding market share, they are buying up and absorbing the mid-sized companies over time) has reduced the range of available choices. Standards have fallen, clients are increasingly dissatisfied, the remaining independent staffing companies are increasingly desperate, turnover among recruiters is sky-high.

It's no wonder client companies are insisting more and more on full-time hires. The staffing industry has become bad enough that the client companies might as well do their own recruiting. The time-to-hire numbers are close to the same, risk from bad matches (everyone is lying) and high contractor prices obviate the elevated risk of having more employees, and many larger companies have become their own staffing companies by explicitly hiring contractors directly on a temporary basis.

This difficult situation makes for wonderful opportunities ...

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