A couple of days ago, I had a call from a recruitment agent about a role with Cognizant. It was for a “payments” role but the agent appeared baffled when I asked about the skills that Cognizant were looking for … cards, core banking, or maybe merchant acquiring?
They want payments, how many years experience do you have?
Oh dear!
First You Take the Call …
Yesterday, I received a call from a Recruitment Agent. I was wary at first because the recruitment agent sounded a little bit like a scammer. He was difficult to understand, he found me difficult to understand, and we spent a lot of time confirming what we had each just told the other.
He asked if I was potentially considering new roles, and I said that I could be, depending on the nature of the role. He said that he was looking for a Business Analyst, to “relocate” to Farnborough for a 12 month contract.
He asked me how many years payments experience I had. I responded by asking if he was referring to core banking payments or card payments. He told me that he was interested in Payments, and then repeated the line from his script, asking how many years payments experience I had.
I realised that he didn’t know the difference and so I responded with 25 years. It’s more than that but I didn’t want him to think that I was old!
and then you speak with someone who doesn’t know …
I enquired further about the nature of the role, but his knowledge was severely limited, and exacerbated by him needing to refer back to his manager every second sentence. I did establish that the Business Analyst role was with Cognizant, and so I asked who the end client would be – Farnborough isn’t short on the Payments front. He knew only that the role was with Cognizant, and I suspect his manager was also unaware. He didn’t appear to be concerned that he didn’t know who the end client might be.
After a few more questions relating to my time in the industry – I guess they were looking for experience over inexperience and “25” was going to be a more acceptable answer then “1” – he asked me how much I would expect to be paid. In my experience, offshore consultancy rates are usually predefined and non-negotiable, and so there is little point in asking the question.
I asked him what Cognizant had defined as the day rate for the role, and his response was £290. Unsurprisingly, it was going to be outside IR35, which according to Contract Calculator, equates to a permanent salary of around £50k. I use this value only as a comparison.
and then they call you again …
Today, I had another call, from what sounded like another call centre, from a lady that I couldn’t understand, and who couldn’t understand me. I made the connection with the previous day, but I listened to what she had to say as she was talking about a Business Analyst role and a Product Owner role.
She tried several times and several different ways to pronounce Farnborough, and then asked me where I was located, I told her that I lived in Hertford. She asked me where I was located three more times, she appeared to be reading from a script, and three times I answered. I finally had to spell it out, which is confusing as the “e” in Hertford sounds like an “a”, and I repeated the spelling twice.
This time, the hiring organisation was … Cognizant. I didn’t get to know who the end client was. I asked but the response was “How many years payment experience do you have?”
We went through the same experience questions, but with the added excitement of a question based on Agile experience. Then she asked how much I wanted, and I gave the standard response of not giving a response. I asked how much Cognizant were going to pay, and she said £290, for both roles, inside IR35.
and they wonder why you are not interested …
When I left Consult Hyperion, which would have been around 20-25 years ago, my first contract was with The Halifax. I was on £50 an hour for a 35 hour week, which equates to £350 per day. Twenty years ago, with what must have amounted to twenty years less experience on my part, I was earning considerably more working for The Halifax than I would if I was working for Cognizant now!
I wonder if the day rates reflect the true nature of the contract market, or whether the rates are primarily driven by a corporate desire to increase and maximise profits, thereby increasing shareholder value.
I wonder if the preferred strategy is to achieve this by reducing costs to the bare minimum. Certainly the two recruiters I engaged with over the last two days would have cost very little, and certainly, had they scored a hit, they would have payed for themselves many times over.
I understand that Cognizant has been recognised as a “Great Place to Work” in 20 countries around the world, but not in the UK and Ireland. They say this on their website.
I wonder what the Cognizant charge out rate for a Business Analyst might be.
