A typical Dublin-based Java developer on a six-month contract will earn €52,200 during the course of the contract while the recruitment agency that placed him or her will earn €18,200. These are the findings gleaned from new online platform RoleConnect whose ‘Fee Speedometer’ received input from more than 600 IT contractors.
The heady salary levels and commissions are at odds with wages and expectations experienced elsewhere in the Irish and European economies.
The findings are significant insofar as IT contractors are usually in the dark as to the figures earned by recruiters for their work, according to Kieran Logan, RoleConnect’s founder and creator of the Fee Speedometer web app.
In one week in late December, 600 IT contractors submitted their daily rates, job titles, years of experience and locations.
Up to 150 software developers, technical architects, software testers and other IT professionals who contract their skills have also been using the tool daily.
How much commission do recruiters make off IT contractors?
As a result, they are able to ascertain – most likely for the first time, says Logan – how much commission the recruiter earns for placing them in their roles.
RoleConnect takes the data from the various annual salary surveys published by the IT recruitment firms and categorised their advertised rates by job title, rates and years of experience and averaged out the results across the various agencies.
When contractors input their information, the Fee Speedometer does a simple look-up to show how much the contractor will earn and how much the recruiter will make.
“Many IT contractors are startled by the results,” Logan says.
“If we take the example of a Java developer on a six-month contract in Dublin earning €400 a day, the contractor will earn €52,200 over the course of the contract and the recruiter will earn fees of €18,270.
“We wanted to bring contractors into the light in terms of what they are earning versus what the recruitment agencies are making,” Logan says.
