I can’t help but notice how a significant proportion of the jobs vacancies I see advertised are for recruitment/headhunter positions. It must be almost half or something close.

Why is this? Is it basically just because recruitment is tough, so there’s a high turnover, like sales? Is recruitment a ‘sector’ – what are the pros and cons?

I’d guess that job security is low, salaries (i.e. basic before bonus) low, targets are hard to hit. Is this the case? Is it fun? Are there ‘good’ and ‘bad’ companies?

Having a business card with ‘Headhunter’ written on it must be pretty cool 8)

EDIT: SORRY wrong forum 😳

Yes it’s a real business and career. It is a sales sort of job and yes it can be tough, a lot depends on interpersonal skills. You can make a lot of money, tens of millions over a period if you are really good and in the right sectors. At the other end of the scale you can struggle to scratch out a living. Recruitment firms often hire juniors as researchers who collect info on potential candidates. What drives profitability at a recruitment firm is getting the contract from the company who is doing the hiring, finding a candidate to fill the vacancy is the easier part.

Recruitment agencies can suck a fart out of my bumhole.

It is indeed a career. Specifically; its a career for people who regard tabloid journalism and Estate agency as far too virtuous a profession

It is indeed a career. Specifically; its a career for people who regard tabloid journalism and Estate agency as far too virtuous a profession

Lol.

I worked in recruitment for a while and ended up depressed and miserable as it started sucking away my soul and morals. If you pray to the god of money it may suit you, otherwise look elsewhere.

My boss described them as failed estate agents which I’d have to agree with based on my own experience. I still can’t believe how much the fee is though, like 15-20% of salary – for what, sending a CV over and then hassling me that the candidate is in great demand and we need to snap them up pfffffft?

I went for an interview as a recruitment consultant a few years ago. Bloody glad I didn’t get it frankly. They seemed like the most arrogant bunch of wide-boy muppets out there!

I lived at home at the time, and was told to lie for the interview and say I had an expensive rent bill to pay as they wanted someone who ‘needed the money to live’, apparently that makes you more driven. They gave me all the blurb in the interview about how their top guys were devoting their life to their job, but they were making a lot of money.

This:

If you pray to the god of money it may suit you, otherwise look elsewhere.

Seems to sum it up nicely.

depends if you are a recruiter for an agent or an in house recruiter and even then some of the specialist agents are very good and far from being wide boys.

I’ve been in recruitment for 23 years BUT I work for myself and I have gone from team of three to myself and my wife part time, the industry has been hit hard (I’m in Industrial Recruitment) and the competition is fierce and the lovely people in Brussels are being a pain in the arse but we have hopefully weathered the worst of it.

I would never want to be a consultant in a major high street name,

Aside from a very few exceptions

Lifer – Member

Recruitment agencies can suck a fart out of my bumhole.

I very much share this sentiment.
IME an industry 99% staffed by shysters, liers & absolute muppets.

I did it for a year and hated every second with every last bone in my body. I worked for one of the biggest firms and it was not unusual to come in on a Monday to see an empty desk next to you as the person who was there last week had been sacked. I worked in an office of 15 and by the time I left after one year there were only five people who had been there longer than me.

By the time I left I was taking home less than minimum wage. The only people who lasted were the biggest w**kers.

I cannot even begin to describe what a terrible industry it is. The comparison with estate agency is not entirely fair. At least in estate agency you are motivated to sell houses for as much as possible. In recruitment (I worked on temp recruitment) you want to pay the temp as little as possible whilst charging the client as much as you can. The difference is what contributes to your commission.

My basic pay was £8k per year, commission is everthing.

Did I mention that I hated it.

You can make a lot of money, tens of millions over a period if you are really good and in the right sectors

This is the line that all of my Uni friends repeated to me before they all lost their souls to recruitment. They’re now all overworked and scrape by financially.

Have to say the industrial recruitment agencies I have been involved with (couple of factory and building site jobs) were a lot better than the office job ones.

The only dealings I’ve had with them in the past have generally been terrible.

I get called daily by headhunters fishing for information about the company I work for, and companies I have worked for. The fishing techniques are cringeworthy are sooo blatant.

Then there is those that start talking about jobs you are not qualified for but they want to put your CV anyway.

Then there is those that call weekly about various jobs they have available in Landaann… ‘I live in Nottingham, I’ve told you this every time you have called me, I dont need or want to move’

Then there is… ok I need to stop.

Wow, theres alot of hatred of recruitment agencies on here! I’ve been in the industry 10 years, although for the last 7 I’ve been on the client side or ‘inhouse recruitment manager’ type. Before that I worked for 3 years as an agent for a recruitment company, and I’ve also experienced it from a candidate side whilst looking for jobs myself.

Whilst I can’t disagree that there are lots of wide boys and bullshitters in the industry I know from experience that there are also some that genuinely add value to my business and know their industries inside out.

For anyone who is considering the industry I’d say beware, speak to those working in it, and research which agencies are good and bad rather than take the standard ‘99% of recruitment consultants are sharks’ for granted from a bunch of folks on a forum. It is tough, but good money can be made, you can build a good reputation within your industry and with your suppliers, and it can open doors of other opprtunities.

Recruitment agent in ‘Recruitment agents are alright’ shocker 😉

what I don’t quite understand is why I would pay £thousands to employ a recruitment company when I can stick an ad in the local paper and recieve 50 applications in a week. Takes an hour to sort the idiots from the potentials, and then a few minutes to arrange an interview.

How are recruitment companies surviving when there are apparently so few jobs?

I have had mixed expeirences with them but on the whole they are lying condecending wan.kers. I had one tell me that I wasn’t qualified enough for a job that I have a degree in because I didn’t have enough office experience and I had one guaranteeing me a job which strangely never materialised.
As a temp working for one it wasn’t half bad, good pay, flexible hours but work was not regular enough to make it worth while doing it for anything longer than 6 months or so.

It’s the number of apparent opportunitiesin recruitment that amazes me. Hundreds of them.

Lifer, read my post. I’ve not been a ‘recruitment agent’ for 8 years, I work for a bank in HR (even worse in many peoples eyes probably!) as a resource manager.

I deal with agents on a daily basis, some good, some shit. But either way I’m probably in a decent position to offer a fairly balanced opinion on them

I work in Recruiment and as some have already said, it all depends on who you work for. The firm I work for are brilliant and not a bunch of C*nts. It can be hard work, it can demand long hours, but it can be amazing fun with the right people.

We recently won the ‘Best Industry Knowledge’ award from Jobsite (which is voted for by candidates looking for work, and we have also just come 2nd in The Times Top 100 Best Small Companies to work for – mainly based on how they treat us here, our work in the community and charity work.

But, and this is the big but, before I interviewed here, I interviewed at a number of places and met some of the biggest bellends I have ever encountered.

Same with any game, some absolute pricks and some decent people.

I deal with agents on a daily basis, some good, some shit. But either way I’m probably in a decent position to offer a fairly balanced opinion on them

Quite apart from this and anything else, it’s a several hundred million pounds a year industry so some of them must be doing something really rather well. My brother is a self employed head hunter and bills around £25k per assignment with his clients. Those clients are professional organizations with bright people giving him the business so he’s obviously adding a lot of value.

One of the reason you’ll see lots of adverts, both in print and online, is because the rec. consultancies are the largest buyers of recruitment advertising. Consequently they are the first port of call to fill space in printed media and they will keep a rolling advert online just to trawl the market for potential candidates (and a lot of those advertising will have high turnover for all the reasons cited above).