- Cost Comparison
- Time to Hire
The real agency complaint: software became what they sold
Cost came second. Both groups rejected the arrangement itself.
A firm that runs on paid search either rents marketing from an agency or owns the seat. The National Law Review carried research from the staffing agency Hire With Near, sorting 300 sales calls by stated reason. Of those, 30% cited a move off their existing offshore team, and 15% were ending an outsourcing deal. Cost savings came second, at 26%. Neither of those first two groups was shopping for a cheaper supplier. They were firing an arrangement.
Two complaints, one decision
The two groups did not share a problem. Companies leaving offshore teams described a clock problem. A call worth 20 minutes in a shared afternoon took three days across an offset of eight to 12 hours. The ones leaving agencies had no offset at all. In the research, their complaint was that software had become the thing they sold. They wanted the engineer in the standup, not an account layer in front of the work.
So distance explains one half and nothing about the other. Both halves landed in the same place anyway. They did not shop for a better supplier. They changed who owns the work.
What the specs asked for
The same research read more than 400 job descriptions US companies had sent in. Communication appeared in 76% of them, ahead of any technical practice in the data. Ownership was in about half. I read that as the tell. Nobody asks for ownership when they are buying output. They ask for it when they have decided to stop buying output.
Only 10% said they could not find the engineers they needed in the US. The report notes that it is double the rate for non-technical roles. Scarcity is real, and it is the small story here. Everything else on that list is about how the work is arranged. Arrangement is the one variable the buyer controls.
Where a firm sits
Legal work does not convert cleanly: a firm sells judgment, and judgment does not travel. Client acquisition is another matter. For a firm whose growth runs on paid search and intake, marketing sits where software sat for those companies. Central to what it sells, and parked behind an account manager. An agency splits its attention across a roster and ships a packaged scope. A full-time hire works toward one firm's goal every day.
The usual response to a disappointing agency is to put the scope out to other agencies and compare quotes. That is a band-aid on a model problem. Different disease. It is why the same conversation keeps coming around. The quotes differ and the arrangement does not. You cannot re-bid your way out of a model.
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