Industries illogical use of Agencies in IT contractor procurement - a humorous musing

I thought I would write a light hearted look at what I genuinely consider to be the most illogical waste of companies money, in paying the middle men. These middle men take anything from 10-30% off the top of other peoples work, for doing virtually nothing.

Hiring IT managers know the sort of people they need, but instead of putting an advert directly on their web site or via aggregated sites like Jobserve, they employ the services of an agency. Here in lies the problem, as most agents have a strange and various past employment history and almost exclusively know next to nothing about complex IT systems. They may have heard of Windows if you're lucky, but start talking about Linux, Java, Ruby and Cloud Services and they start to glaze over

So in an attempt to consider what might be going through an ex-RSPCA dog handlers mind when talking to an IT hiring manager - here is my stab.

1) Agile - hmm so he wants the new guy to do yoga - probably a small office

2) Puppet - ok that makes sense he can keep the kids happy with a show on "bring your kids to work day"

3) Chef - good point , saves on kitchen staff as he can cook lunch while programming

4) Java - well if he is making the lunch he might as well make the coffee as well.

5)Tomcat - lion taming is a great skill, and could work well while the kids are in

6) VMware - probably similar to Tupaware - but why he wants him to sell home goods is a bit odd

7) Solaris - well green energy is in vogue - so sola panel knowledge could be handy

8) Perl - Knowledge of jewellery is always handy - especially to please the bosses wife

9) Ruby - Boy he really is into his Jewellery, I will have to check what they do for a business.

10) Python - that is just odd, perhaps he keeps snakes in the office as pets. Hope they don't escape, could cause chaos with the Lion.

This is obviously not an exhaustive list , and I could have been a lot harsher, but I hope it makes you smile like it does me when I see job adverts for Pearl developers - do they want me to polish gems for a living.