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I work in recruitment and have done for about two years. I started at the bottom and worked my way up. I was a yes sir man until the start of this year when I started working for a huge recruitment company.
A lot of you will not know that recruitment is sales driven, where YOUR CV is just a tool to be used to meet KPIs. I can list all the agencies to stay away from on this site, but that would take up a lot of time so Ill just say stay away from all of them. There are a few amazing ones, but for every good story to be told there is 10 bad ones. It's sad but true...
So what am I getting at? My gripe is that recruitment is run a bit like a car sales yard or perhaps one of those double glazing call centres. Most consultants no nothing of the industry they work in. I am an ex-aerospace engineer, I have a degree in the industry and I once worked for the air force. I know how to talk to an engineer and I understand how the companies work. But 99% of the agencies you will deal with all have sales people dealing with your application. They judge you on not what you have done over time, but on your most recent job. From that basic precedent you have very little chance of getting the job you apply for.
They really don't care if you get the job or not...
If your CV is good however, be prepared to be sent to what ever company in your area that uses people like you, because these people have KPIs to meet. That is all that they are interested in. They really don't care if you get the job or not. If you do that's great, but they're more interested in that 6K threshold a month so they can earn commission. You're just a number on the books, you're a meal ticket if you like!
Here is a bit of free advice. Don't bother to put references on your CV, this is used (or rather misused) as a contact into YOUR business, and they will call them without your permission. If they ask you Who do you currently work for? - just make a name up, because they will call them and thats the last thing you want... Really!
Job boards like Monster are looked at by millions of potential employers apparently (yeah right!). Well, this is complete BULL, because it's looked at by millions of recruitment agencies trying to find companies to call so they can get vacancies to chase. They're just sharks on a feeding frenzy.
So why am I blowing the lid on one of the UKs biggest growing industries? Well these fast paced high turn over companies are destroying an industry that USED to be service. It is now treated like a car lot, where you (the potential employee) are the next quick buck and they don't care what you want, they just want your details to feed the KPIs.
My advice people, is just apply direct to the companies and not through agencies. This recruitment industry and their agents are killing the UK.
By: Whistleblower
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This post has zero credibility when you have been a recruiter for 2 years, with what sounds like a company on the lower level of ethical practices. Whats your frame of reference except your desk for 2 years? Did a mate tell you? Did you read it in the sun? A LinkedIn post by an angry candidate who didn't get the job? There is no quick buck in the recruitment industry, and i am tired of people who have an axe to grind, using recruitment as a whipping boy for their own inadequacies.
Don't blame an industry for you not being able to cut it in a what is a difficult profession. There are a lot of things killing the UK, and the self entitled 'its not my fault' culture is one of the biggest.
They do not care whether you get a job or not, whether you are a good fit to their client or not. They are just going through motions in the database hoping one the received CVs will be "sold" to a client. That is why I was dreading to use a recruiting company when employing a team member but unfortunately in the country where I live there is not much other choice. 90% of ads here is through a recruiting company. We received a number of pre-selected CVs that in my opinion should go straight to a trash bin or with profiles that were completely unfit for what we were looking for. I wasted hours on interviewing "pre-selected" people who were not even interested in a job or were aware of the details of the job. We were looking for a junior position in the market which is the most common in this country and it still took us 5 months to fill a vacancy. How is this even possible? In the end they get 35% of the annual salary of the candidate as a fee and I am not sure even sure for what exactly. It is unfortunate how many job markets in different countries are ruled by recruiting agencies and a candidate has no other choice. I really hope that with years this will change and global companies will realize that employing an internal HR person who has the interest of the company rather than recruiting agencies brings more value in the long term.
Thanks for that - I am now out of work for the first time in my life- and I have worked for the same company for twenty one years- I feel absolutely useless and I feel agencies talk to you as if you are stupid - and are just having a laugh at my expense and tell you anything just so as you sign on with them.
Kind regards
Sara
A few months back, I came to know how one can spot good recruitment agencies and thus make their job search more better. www.recfluence.com is the platform which can be used to check the reviews of the various recruitment agencies and thus the candidate get the benefits of it by spotting the good recruitment agencies which thus make them to search better employment.
There are however also a fair number of knowledgeable, ethical and hard working recruiters who genuinely help clients find hard to source talent and candidates get jobs they may not otherwise get access to. These people work very long hours, largely to meet candidates in the evenings when convenience to them, perform an often thankless job where popular opinion is as reflected by the (probably failing) recruiter who wrote this article, and actually help people achieve what they want.
The challenge is knowing which is which and finding out before it is too late. In some sectors it's easier because the recruiter meets the candidate and you can tell very quickly what their motivations are. In lower salary, higher volume parts of the market it's not so easy.
These days they're more like crack houses - go in, get some "verbal crack," but once you are done, you are left hanging! Strung out and hoping to get a "hit"/they will call and place you on a long-term or temp-to-perm assignment, but they rarely, if ever, do.
Ricky