The CV looked perfect. Five years of Power BI listed under skills. Worked at a couple of decent companies. Bonus points for some Azure on the side.
The interview went well. They knew the right answers to the right questions. They could talk about data models and incremental refresh and a couple of recent client projects in convincing detail. Sign them up. Contract starts Monday.
Three months in, you are still explaining what your acronyms mean. There is a better way to find data people, and I want to talk about why this happens, because it is not really anyone's fault. It is just the wrong tool for the job.
The CV looked great on paper
You need a Power BI developer. You call your usual staffing agency. They send five CVs by Thursday. The candidates all have "Power BI" prominently on the resume. You pick one. They start.
And then you spend the first month explaining your data model. Then your business context. Then your reporting standards. Then why the existing dashboards are set up the way they are, which is a separate conversation from how the underlying data is structured, which is a separate conversation again from how the team actually uses the reports day to day.
By the time the new person is actually useful, the contract is half over.
Why this keeps happening
Generalist agencies match keywords to job descriptions. That is what they do. It is fine for plenty of roles. It is not fine for specialist data and analytics work, because the difference between "has used Power BI on a project" and "can architect an enterprise reporting solution that holds up in a regulated environment" is enormous, and a recruiter who places marketing coordinators on Tuesday and warehouse staff on Wednesday is not going to be able to tell which is which.
To them, it is all just "data stuff." The candidates with the right keywords get put forward. The interview process catches some of the gap but not enough.
The difference between someone who has used Power BI and someone who can build an enterprise reporting solution is enormous. Recruiters who do not work in our world cannot tell the difference.
Everything they learned walks out the door
Then comes the moment the contract ends. Maybe the project finished. Maybe the budget changed. Maybe the contractor moved on. Whatever the reason, they leave.
And everything they spent the last six months learning walks out the door with them.
The data model they built. The business rules they figured out from those conversations with the operations manager. The reasoning behind why certain measures are calculated the way they are. The half-finished documentation on a personal Notion they never shared. The Slack account that gets deactivated. The reports that are 80 percent done.
And now you are hiring again. Different agency, maybe. Different candidate. Same induction.
What if they already knew your world
Our consultants come from inside our practice. They have built dashboards for mining companies, government departments, and banks. They do not need a month to get up to speed because they already work to enterprise standards, with enterprise tooling, in enterprise environments. They have hit the same problems your team is hitting. They have solved them.
When the engagement ends, there is a proper handover. Documentation. A debrief. The option to train your team to carry it forward, because we do training too. The same standards apply to the handover as to the build, because it is the same practice running both.
The other thing, and this is the one I find most agencies cannot match: if our person is sick, or has to step out for a week, we have someone else in the practice who can step in. Not "we will send you a different CV next month." Today. Try that with your agency contractor.
Not recruitment. Extending your team.
The way we think about it is not recruitment. It is extending your team with people who are already at the level you need, who already understand your space, who come with the full practice behind them.
If you are tired of the hire-train-lose cycle, let us have a chat. We do this differently and I think you will like how. And if it is not the right fit, I will tell you that too. There are people we work with sometimes who would be better served by a different model. I would rather you find the right answer than the one I am selling.