Prospective employers' expectations

PoorCharleyBear

I was given a job spec I was given by a recruiting agent but told him I did not match the required skills. Agent advised that the employer had rejected a fair number of candidates but really wanted to see me as they indicated they had a different role in mind -not the heavily accountancy based one, which I had been given a description for.

So I was called for an interview and spent 1/2 a day and my own money going to it. The second I arrived the interviewer asked about my accountancy background.....'er none as you can see from my CV'.
'Oh we thought you might have some'
.......Oh I guess you must mean the accountancy qualification which I completely forgot about and failed to mention in my 20 year job and qualification history?:mad:

I feel really annoyed that I have wasted time, energy, preparation, money-for something which the interviewers so clearly knew I did not match requirements.

Vent over!

dawyldthing

i had something similar as ive worked in a few different supermarkets and so went for a supervisor role. Not only was it not in the town they said it was (about 2 towns away and would have took 2 buses and about 10 pounds a day in bus fare) but then when i asked afterwards why i hadn't got the job they said it was because someone had more frozen food experience.

PoorCharleyBear

Good to hear I am not alone....what a waste of everyone's time!

Interviews are generally relatively scarce (reading the posts on this board) so why interview patently unsuitable candidates?

smileylondongal

Did you ask the consultant why they'd sent you in and why your interviewer didn't seem to know about that other mysterious role? I'd hold the consultant accountable for all of this tbh as a good one would smell a rat and try and anticipate it, however sometimes misunderstandings and poor communication happen so that candidate can suffer.

InsideInsurance

You have to remember that recruitement agents simply work for themselves.... they will under play the skills required that your CV doesnt match to you and will over play your skills to the potential employer so that you agree to apply and they agree to interview you.

With new legislation coming in to the insurance industry and I have a small amount of exposure to the outer edges of it I have had no end of calls from agents looking to fill roles which require indepth knowledge of the core technical aspect of the legislation (according to the job spec) but they all have said I would match it and they were over stating the requirement on the spec.

Personally, read the spec - its what the employer has actuall said, and use your own judgement and experience to know which of the items on the spec are must haves and which are nice to haves (as certainly the spec is a shopping list and you aren't expected to exceed all of them)

Any

The agency obviously screwed up. If accountancy was required, they would have known! And should have checked with you! They are responsible for matching candidates with jobs available!
They wasted the company's time/money as well. Obviously not good agency at all.
And why did they not give you the spec (and why did you not request it) for this mysterious job? How did you know you would even want to do that job if you didn't know what it is?

PoorCharleyBear

InsideInsurance wrote: »

You have to remember that recruitement agents simply work for themselves.... they will under play the skills required that your CV doesnt match to you and will over play your skills to the potential employer so that you agree to apply and they agree to interview you.

Yes I will keep this in mind for any future roles...and reject those which my gut feeling says are not right.
The 'other' role was a verbal discussion between employer and agent and was all very transient, but retrospectively it seems incredibly transient, as to be non- existent!

In the meantime I have been for another interview which was so much better- the interviewers, the skills match. Even if I don't get the job, the interview restored my faith in the process!

DCFC79

Yep its quite annoying when it happens. I had an interview last year for a trainee supervisor job, i applied for it because it was a trainee role and the firm was an employer i had left 4 years ago but i wasnt expecting a mock grilling of a member of staff about being late and appearence. They could clearly see from my application I had no supervisor experience so why bother to interview me. I applied for it because it was a trainee position and thought I would get training to get to a certain standard.

InsideInsurance

PoorCharleyBear wrote: »

The 'other' role was a verbal discussion between employer and agent and was all very transient, but retrospectively it seems incredibly transient, as to be non- existent!

The problem is that it is a competitive market at the moment and one that is in flux as well. There are a lot of candidates on the market but not a massive amount of work.

In theory it means there are more available candidates that could fill the role the employer has and so agents realise the quicker they get CVs in the higher the chance they have of getting their candidate selected plus if they get the candidate to agree to go through them now they block another agency from submitting the same candidate later.

I often have to recruite fairly high skilled people with different areas of knowledge. Whilst I have a good idea of the general rate of pay these types of roles get I don't know if there has been a sudden spike in demand for that particular skill set or what impact it is having on rates of pay.

On occasions I have therefore spoken to a specialist agent to see what their current experience is so that I can budget correctly and make the decision on if to recruite or not etc. Whilst it is clear to the agent that it is "for information purposes only" I know for a fact that more than one has immediately gone out to candidates trying to find/ prep them and agree the exclusivity even though there is actually no signed off vacancy yet so they can steel them march on the other agencies once it does get formally advertised