Wanted Dead or Alive: A Decent Recruiter
by andyravensable on January 11, 2012
Once again, due to being a contractor, I’ve had to become involved in what is possibly the worst part of my job – looking for a new contract. Now, don’t get me wrong here, I love what I do, and wouldn’t change it for the world, and, when it comes to looking at new possibilities, I actually get what could probably be classed as unreasonably excited about the opportunity and potential of what I can do for a company. However, there’s one not-so very small thing that stands between me and those opportunities; the recruitment agencies.
For those of you unfamiliar with the process, for one reason or another, let me give you a basic run-down of how it works. A contractor like myself, or anyone who works permanently and is looking for their next role, will usually put their CV up online, on sites such as Guardian Jobs, Monster, or the much used portal Jobsite, and then use those sites to search for jobs which are pertinent to them. If, like me, you work in a field which is tech-savvy, and such things are expected of you, you might even use social media sites such as LinkedIn, put a gallery of work up on Behance, or even set up your own portfolio site, which will increase your profile visibility, and get you more easily found by those who you’re looking to employ you. After all, nothing quite impresses more than coming top of the rankings on Google when people search for relevant search terms. Once you’ve done all that, the candidate will apply to roles, send out CVs, and hope the phone rings soon.
Now chances are here that, unless you’re lucky enough to be contacted directly by the company you’ve applied to, it’s more than likely that the company will have employed a recruitment company to sift through all the CVs and search out the ideal candidates for the role. I can appreciate this, as searching for the right candidates for a role you’re offering is a full time job on its own, and many people have enough to do in their everyday jobs without having to do this as well. It makes sense, in regards to finances and time, to employ someone to do the job for you.
This is however where things, more often than not in my own experience, don’t go so well. It seems that many of the recruiters seem to approach the whole thing with an appalling sense of laissez faire that seems to verge on the downright apathetic. To illustrate, let me run-down some of the worst crimes I’ve witnessed:
- Little or no knowledge of subject matter: I know that some of the things I deal with can be somewhat technical, but I’ve been on the phone to recruiters numerous times when their lack of knowledge on a given subject matter isn’t just obvious, it’s practically comedic. I clearly state to people on my CV that I’m a digital designer and front end developer, and have been asked by recruiters if I know Oracle, Java, or in one case, Fortran., all of which are back-end technologies. I’ve even witnessed recruiters who don’t know the difference between Java and JavaScript.
- A clear lack of interest in what they’re doing: There have been times when, on the phone to a recruiter, I’ve been answering a questions they’ve asked me, and received a litany of “yup”, “mmhmm” and “uh-huh”, that I’ve even been tempted to veer off into complete nonsense, just to see if they’re paying attention. I understand this is you job, and you probably hate it, but hey, if that’s the case, why not find a new one – after all, isn’t that what you do for people every day? If you’re not interested in what you’re doing, and it’s impairing your ability to work professionally, then change it. Otherwise, it just makes us candidates feel rather useless, and is deeply discouraging when you’re trying to promote yourself to someone. It also shows when you have no idea of what you’re talking about, as detailed in the point above.
- A lack of attention to detail and professionalism: As with the points above, this really give the impression that recruiters don’t care about the people they’re dealing with. At one point, I even travelled to an interview with a company on the Isle of Wight, only to find that I was entirely unsuitable for the role, because the recruiter had neglected to mention the fact that they were looking for commerce programmers, and not commerce designers, and, only an hour before writing this, I had a recruiter leave a message on my answer phone, leaving a number to call her back at, but no name whatsoever, so when I called back, they couldn’t pass me on to right person, because they had no idea who wanted to deal with me. Yesterday, I was on the phone to a recruiter, and all of a sudden a loud noise came through the speaker. He had to apologise, as apparently a loud klaxon goes off in the office every time someone makes a placement. What is this, Boiler Room? The list could go on and on, I’m sure you get the idea.
The frustration here is that, while in some cases, there are jobs on offer where you can apply directly to the employer, a much larger proportion of job opportunities mean you have to deal with a recruiter in order to just get through to the employer in the first place, and they’re standing in your way like Cerberus, with the three heads of incompetence, disaffection and ignorance, between you and your chance to prove you abilities to get the job you want.
I entirely understand that there will be those who read this who are in the recruitment field, and are perfectly competent at what they do, to whom I apologise if I’ve offended, but this post is written entirely from the majority of my own experience, and, because of that, I think it’s entirely valid for me to say that there are more bad examples in the recruitment field than good ones. To those of you who have read this far, and believe they fall in the category of good recruiters, I suggest you prove me wrong – drop me an email, tell me about those opportunities you have that will suit my skill sets, and show me just how you can make finding a new placement easier. Go on, prove me wrong, I’d love to hear from you.
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5 comments
I have a few things to say about your post.
Recruiters aren’t there to serve you, infact, quite the opposite.
When I was young, I thought a recruitment consultant was “a person who helps you get a job” – Not even joking. It was the viewpoint I had until I actually needed to find work one day and discovered they are actually hardened salespersons. You are their product, being sold to organisations.
Now, I don’t have to tell the sales people out there that the job is all about highs and lows – I could tell you the benefits of buying product A over product B anytime. The hard part of recruitment is when that product constantly shifts and changes (it’s mind.) and ever single product is different from the next.
Some candidates seem to think that they are the priority because they are looking for a job. That’s not the case, especially if your CV is on a jobsite. You have to question why someone’s CV is on a jobsite for a start – Why haven’t they been headhunted for a better post? Why did they lose their job in the first place without something else to go to? Can they be that good if their freelance / contract work dried up?
Most recruiters work at UTTER MINIMUM 15% fee. This means that if you are going for a job, which you then get at say £30,000 per year, the recruitment company will charge £4,500 just for you to join them (or a percentage of the contract fee). If you have a number of staff hired in a short space of time, you can see how expensive this is. Companies expect spot-on candidates all the time for this.
Sometimes, you can’t quite get everything you want. A CV need to be treated more like a tick-sheet and not a “absolute musts” – If you can’t find someone with 25 years experience in Social Media (Yes, I have seen this..) then maybe 15 years and 10 years in marketing will suffice?
“What is this, Boiler Room? ”
Yes. Most recruitment offices are like that. You’re dealing with hard sales people most of the time.
What is most upsetting about this post is that you are doing exactly what you seem to hate – slandering an entire industry of people because you have had a bad experience. The argument portrayed here is: “Once I had a bad experience with this asian guy, the majority of asians seem to be bad people because of this, COME ON GUYS I CHALLENGE YOU TO BE DIFFERENT.”
My advice would be to use the agency as useful tool, and not try and make them ‘work for you’ – They are there to open the door to opportunities, sure, but it’s you that has to get the job. Apply for things off your own back, to HR directors / Marketing directors / Creative directors. Go on linkedin and do your own ‘homework’ – Network. It’s more likely to land you a job.
by Marc on January 11, 2012 at 3:11 pm. Reply #
Another recruiter crime I’ve encountered goes like this – they find your CV on one of the job sites and call asking you questions about your experience and current situation but won’t give you any information about who they are and what roles they are trying to fill. When I refuse to say who I am currently working for (I won’t talk about much unless I think there is a real opportunity and I am currently looking) they assume I’m another recruiter with a fishing CV trying to steal openings from them and turn quite rude….if I can identify their agency their number gets struck off the ‘call when i’m looking’ list of agencies.
by Neil Hopcroft on January 11, 2012 at 3:57 pm. Reply #
Yes, they’re salespeople. Yes, you’re the commodity, but you’re also a customer, and the jobs they can sell to you are a commodity too.
It’s a classic sales situation: You need to give people what they want, at a price that they are willing to pay.
I’m willing to pay some of my time, but they need to provide job opportunities.
To claim that they’re not working for the jobseeker is like saying that the agent doesn’t work for the artist.
by Nathanael on January 11, 2012 at 4:09 pm. Reply #
To the previous commenter: The problem is that if you are hiring, using an agency is even more frustrating than it is for the hapless job seeker, and the problems are related to those Andy has listed here.
Why send me CVs that include typos for an editorial job, especially when I asked for native English speakers? We’re looking for an intern, why send me someone who has been working in the editorial field for 2 years? They won’t want the job we have on offer.
Yes, of course jobseekers network, but everyone also looks at job ads, and good agencies can find you excellent jobs. Also, if you have a good agent, you can look for a job *before* your contract expires, because they do the work.
Only, I’ve never seen a good agency in the technical world: only the odd person who took the trouble to learn the technical details that would help them find people for those hiring. (I have a lot of techie friends)
Such things do exist in other specialist areas, so it is possible. But you have to train people to find what companies are looking for, and I don’t think they do that very often.
H
by Heather on January 11, 2012 at 4:25 pm. Reply #
There are a growing number of no-agent job boards such as jobstheword.co.uk/ which are having some success at removing the middleman.
by Tom on January 11, 2012 at 5:28 pm. Reply #