Recruitment Agencies Are Useless!!

Willem-de-Blois

hardboiled wrote: »

Then refusing to tell you who a company is
then having the balls to ask if I've got any other interviews pending so they can go an pester the company. Don't tell them about anything you've got on the go.

I made that mistake a couple of days ago. Luckily, the company that I mentioned is so large, interviews could be happening anywhere. It was the first time I was telephoned by an agency and I was given the impression that he had a few hot leads for me. After he got the answers to his questions, he said that he didn't have anything for me at the minute.

I felt swindled but in the longterm, alienating candidates is not a good idea.

I'd be surprised if the only agency in town could survive yet there are loads of them in any given town. They are part of the modern British high street along with kebab shops, charity shops, pawn brokers, Tesco and letting agents.

Did they always exist?

Manchee

I used to work for a small recruitment consultancy, and to be fair not all RC are the same, but they're all just trying to do a job, meet targets and get paid at the end of the month.

hardboiled wrote: »

I'm plagues with them several times a day " What's your job situation". Well obviously looking which is why you pulled my CV off jobsite for this week!
Then refusing to tell you who a company is
then having the balls to ask if I've got any other interviews pending so they can go an pester the company. Don't tell them about anything you've got on the go.

I'm angry because I've just had to end a 20yr I.T career due to being f!!ked about by agency after agency calling and sending my CV into black holes, then from the same agency a new person will call asking the same dumb questions because they rarely keep notes about the last call and who from.
They've been so useless I've had to find work OUTSIDE OF I.T for the first time in my life despite having 10yrs project management experience.

And on Channel 4 recently is show their dubious acts of listing jobs that don't exist ( or speculative jobs they MIGHT have soon ) being listed on the governments jobcentre website. They've been allowed to get away with this because there's no one to check, but hopefully that's all going to come to an end soon.

Personally I think there's needs to be enforceable legislation with their dubious acts.

Recruitment agencies are the last refuge for someone with no administration skills

When it comes to them asking you who you have interviews with, its not just about trying to find additional clients, its also about making a judgment as to how likely its going to be to place you as a candidate. If you have 3 interviews coming up and are waiting to hear from another couple, there's a stronger possibility that you're gonna be offered a position before the consultant can find you anything, its about the consultant working effectively and pursuing avenues that are more likely to end in a placement.

They're not going to tell you who the company is as information is their bread and butter. They want to be able to collect payment for placing a candidate with the client, if they told you who they were recruiting for chances are you would try and cut them out as middlemen and they would lose their commission.

In general what people have to remember is that you are not the person paying their wages, you are not their priority. The client who is hiring is. CVs and candidates to fill positions is the commodity they are selling to the client. In addition they have so many CVs and candidates that they don't have time to give candidates a personalized service. It doesn't matter to them if you've been out of work for 3 months (except for how that would look compared to other candidates being put forward), all that matters is hitting target and putting forward candidates that the client is going to hire over anyone else they interview. Unless you have an amazing CV, if you seem to be difficult and too much hassle to place, recruitment consultants won't waste as much time on you as other candidates.

ETA: Although recruitment consultancies seem like the devil, they do sometimes have vacancies that would not be advertised elsewhere, clients sometimes employ them as they don't want to waste time going through CVs, all they want is to be give a small handful of candidates to interview rather than be swamped with hundreds of applications.

Two4Tuesday

I'm with Reed at the moment in a very nice contract, but they messed me around even after starting my assignment.

I had been working onsite but without access to my timesheet. When I chased it up after 4 days (they said it would take that long initially) they then said they couldn't give me access until they had received my references from previous employment.

Regardless of the fact that my references had already been sent, if my references were that important then they shouldn't have even had me start on assignment (on a secure government site)

AP007

Manchee wrote: »

It doesn't matter to them if you've been out of work for 3 months (except for how that would look compared to other candidates being put forward), all that matters is hitting target and putting forward candidates that the client is going to hire over anyone else they interview. Unless you have an amazing CV, if you seem to be difficult and too much hassle to place, recruitment consultants won't waste as much time on you as other candidates.

.

That's not true as when I had been out of work 3 months a lot of agencies told me they would not be able to put me forward yet if I was still in work would put my CV over first!

If employer says no one unemployed the agency say ok as they pay their wages.

[Deleted User]

Two4Tuesday, I've recently finished with the same high street agency under my nearest branch and was submitting Timesheets online - that was through this http://candidate.reed.co.uk/ and also filling out manual timesheets on site. They sent through an ID and payroll number before I even started though I got the oga over references also which seemed moot as I started next day!






Though today they are already phoning me about new vacancies which was unexpected when I should now be of their books! LOL all very weird - I was with Reed Specialist as I realise there are different divisions.

wapow

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4936844=

Cottage_Economy

Chris_Hanna wrote: »

Agree, but how can you find out about jobs and apply direct?

One way of doing it that can often yield results is to take a sentence in the middle of the job description and search for it in Google. A lot of agencies just cut and paste the client's description, top and tail it with their own guff and then upload, which is handy as a lot of their clients will also advertise their vacancies on their own websites using the same job description.

However my favourite way of finding out the organisation is when the really bad recruiters don't even read the client job spec and don't realise that the client name is mentioned somewhere buried deep in it

AP007

Cottage_Economy wrote: »

One way of doing it that can often yield results is to take a sentence in the middle of the job description and search for it in Google. A lot of agencies just cut and paste the client's description, top and tail it with their own guff and then upload, which is handy as a lot of their clients will also advertise their vacancies on their own websites using the same job description.

However my favourite way of finding out the organisation is when the really bad recruiters don't even read the client job spec and don't realise that the client name is mentioned somewhere buried deep in it

Oh how true that is. I found one once saying something like

Post all cheques to the XXXX accounts system

XXXX was the name of the company and I was thinking what idiots they are!

Another was posted by two agencies one saying
Property company in SW1 and the other said
Property company that manages shopping centres in Victoria

When one agency said 'they will nto interview you as you are not working' I said that's ok I will contact them myself. Got an interview but alas not the job.

susieq87

i have had good/bad experiences with agencies. All the jobs i tend to apply for are usually advertised by agencies anyway so 9/10 times they receive my cv. what i have noticed though is that they will send you to an interview and if you're unsuccessful they will try and place you again but if you are unsuccessful twice they will not contact you again. I went to an interview where the agency couldnt even be bothered to tell me the outcome, i had to call them got fobbed off then they called me back 3 days later when i was on the phone to them everyday before that when they were trying to place me!
i noticed this with a few agencies but as said before their job is to get paid and that pay is from the company so they have no loyalties to unsuccessful candidates.

i am currently working part time with an agency and when i told them that i was looking to go into full time and asked for them to contact me if anything came up *crickets* i have seen them advertise online for jobs and when i send an email saying im interested in this job advertised they ignore my email or tell me to send an updated cv which ive done numerous times but still nothing! i am guessing them placing me on a permanent position will stop their regular payments where i am working now.

Manchee

AP007 wrote: »

That's not true as when I had been out of work 3 months a lot of agencies told me they would not be able to put me forward yet if I was still in work would put my CV over first!

If employer says no one unemployed the agency say ok as they pay their wages.

Ah well, that's the way it was for our consultancy (maybe that's the difference between a standard high street recruitment agency and a recruitment consultancy?) - we mainly head hunted for the clients that were on our books, it was seen as if you weren't employed already or had been out of work for a while, there was usually a reason why.