Pluspunten
2 years ago I was contacted by a recruiter of this company for an opportunity with a major FinTech company. The recruiter made no mention or clear indication that it will be an employment as a contractor for Talan. I gave the tedious 5 hour/5 round technical interview with the FinTech company. The recruiter then gets back to me that the FinTech company wants to offer me the job but when I received the job offer letter, its an employment contract with Talan and not the company I interviewed with. Being exhausted from the job search and the economic situation, I accepted and signed the contract with Talan as I was eager to start working. For the next 2 years, I work at the site of the FinTech company I interviewed with. My only interaction with Talan is that I was required to submit timesheets everyweek alongside the timesheet that I was required to submit at the on-site company. Talan's buisiness model is that they charge companies a factor of more than 1.0 the salary that they are paying you. So they could be charging the other company 1.5 times, 2x or even greater the amount of the salary I was paid by Talan to work for the other company. All while, Talan offers me next to no benefits, I received absolutely no raise (not even adjusting for inflation and cost of living) in the 2 years while we go through one of the worst inflation crises of our generation. I am only offered five paid sick days for the whole year for which I cannot even take them consecutively if I would like to take the day off for more than one day in the same month. After 2 years, the FinTech company ends my employment contract with them as its only a consultant position and not a full time employee. At the time, my understanding was that I am now unemployed but I was still employee of Talan. In a sense, I felt that its actually a blessing then that I am an employee of Talan and not the FinTech company as I was continued to being paid the agreed amount salary by Talan even though I was not working as Talan's consultant to any other company in the interim. 2 weeks later, Talan sets up an interview with another FinTech company as a consultant. My interview goes well, the recruiters at Talan then tell me that they will follow up with me about the opportunity very soon, I never heard back from these recruiters about the result of the interview. During this time, I am assigned a "Manager" who is at most the same level as me in terms of technical level and company seniority if not less and I am generously making this comparison. The manager is asking me to call him on his personal cell phone after working hours because I did not reply to his message on Teams in the same day. I am constantly bugged and bothered by this person as he constantly wants to "catch up" with me just because "he is my manager" which is just a way to micro manage because Talan cannot tolerate employees who can be self sufficient. Talan wants to have total control over their employees and wants complete compliance from them all the time. Also, this "manager" offers nothing of value to me in terms of learning, technical skill or experience as he is below my level in all those regards, the only leverage he has over me is that he could natively speak french and I am not french speaking. I declined the "catch up" meeting with this "manager" because I told him that its of no use and then in-response Talan laid me off the very next day. Talan never even updated me about the interview result with the new FinTech company I interviewed with just 1 week earlier so its not even that I failed to secure that position as Talan's consultant. I honestly do not know why Talan laid me off, Talan never even informed me the reason. Talan even asked and expected me to sign a letter that states bunch of non-compete clauses which can make it difficult for me to get a job in the same industry in the future and also that I cannot speak negatively about Talan in anyway, to anyone and anywhere whatsoever. Talan is absolutely horrible and toxic. The sense of entitlement they feel over their employees and the amount of control they expect of over their employees is only made worse by the fact that Talan pays a fraction of the money they receive from the company you will work for as their consultant and you still have to work just as hard if not more as the consultant compared to any full-time employees at the other company. The only thing that Talan is good for is the initial introduction to the company and nothing more, just as any other recruiter in the world. The people at Talan are incredibly toxic and the business model is based on theivery and the sense of entitlement and the culture at Talan is absolutely not worth compared to anything that Talan offers.
Minpunten
see the pros above for cons