(Phone rings)

Hello.

Hi, It’s XXXXX from YYYYY. I saw your advert for the job.

Are you a recruitment agency?

Yes.

Did you read the bit in the advert that said we didn’t want recruitment agencies contacting us?

Yes but…

But you thought you’d contact us anyway?

Yes but…

(Phone gets put down).

And breathe…

I always try and be nice to them, even though we have a no agencies policy too.

You never know when you might want them to find you a job 😉

I tried being nice at first but we have had as many recruitment agencies as candidates contact us and I want to get on with work. And Singletrack.

I hate that someone who doesnt actually know anything about the skills on your CV stands between you and a potential job.

They’re just trying to do their job at the end of the day. Having said that, I work in recruitment, but wouldn’t phone the person if the advert said no agencies. I might email, and say that although we are an agency, we are very good at what we do, and very cheap, and if you have no joy using your own recruitment methods, then you have nothing to lose giving us a go. 😉

I hate that someone who doesnt actually know anything about the skills on your CV stands between you and a potential job.

Why would they stand in your way? If you are a *reasonable* match for the role, then you will be put forward to the client and they will have the ultimate decision about your suitability.

You should not also assume that the consultants you deal with know nothing about your skills. Many of our consultants were previously employed within the industries they now service.

I am responsible for engineering recruitment, and I’m a trained engineer! 🙂

Once bitten and all that – several years ago we paid a recruitment agency a large sum to find us a specialist programmer. A few days before the project was due to be delivered the programmer admitted he couldn’t do it.

So we let the client down, had to pay someone else to do the work and the agency’s response? They only provide the introduction, they can’t guarantee the the quality of the person’s work or entertain refunds.

Once bitten and all that – several years ago we paid a recruitment agency a large sum to find us a specialist programmer. A few days before the project was due to be delivered the programmer admitted he couldn’t do it.

So we let the client down, had to pay someone else to do the work and the agency’s response? They only provide the introduction, they can’t guarantee the the quality of the person’s work or entertain refunds.

I’ve never understood why people pay agencies up front to find them someone. We only ever bill on succesful placement, and we refund this money on a sliding scale if the candidate leaves within 3 months.

From the other end of the scale, I’m looking around at the moment and am getting fed up of calls from agencies –
“So can you tell me a little about yourself, your skills, what you’re up to at the moment?”
“Do you have my CV in front of you?”
“Yes”
[would like to say]”Then read what it says”[/would like to say]
I know they’re doing a job, but fer heaven’s sake – if there’s something that’s not on there that you want to know, then yeah, ask by all means. But stop ringing me up and asking me to verbally regurgitate what’s on the screen in front of you. 🙁

pondo, maybe they’re trying to see what you’re like as a person, whether you can give a synopsis of your cv in a coherent and structured way etc

I often talk to people on skype/the phone before a formal interview – I’d ask them for a summary of where they’re at in their career etc as part of that conversation as it’s a good ‘ice breaker’ letting them talk about themselves.

If someone said ‘Have you got my cv? Well it’s all on there you numpty!’ or words to that effect I probably wouln;t progress their application 😉

I was in recruitment for 8 years or so, it’s a thankless job from both sides, clients whinging about the cost of paying for exactly the candidate they asked you to find and candidates whinging that YOU didn’t get them the job.

I’ve helped quite a few people get pay increases of 50% + over the years, many people have said I found them their dream role and I’ve had clients tell me they were over the moon with the people I had found to fill their vacancies. The reason I stopped is that for every decent recruiter there are 100 cocks and you get tarred with the same brush, it gets annoying. As for candidates thinking I should rely on their CV for the facts, yeah good one, part of the job is interviewing the candidates in depth on behalf of the client, anyone who won’t do an interview with me doesn’t get put forward. And as for no relevant skills, well run competency based interviews meant I didn’t have to know everything my candidates did but I did need them to prove they could do what they said they could.

I often worked retained as why the hell would I work for a month on a brief only to have the role cancelled at a whim or some such and find myself out of pocket. Ask for 15k up front and you soon weed out the timewasters.

I’ve never understood why people pay agencies up front to find them someone. We only ever bill on succesful placement, and we refund this money on a sliding scale if the candidate leaves within 3 months.

The deal was we paid them at the end of the month (based on time tickets). The project was over several months and work was being done, so we were paying. It was at the end that the project imploded. It wasn’t that he did *nothing* but we had to pay someone else to unpick it all and put it right.

Ohh and we were due to do a *soft-launch* hand-over on the Monday, we got the call at 8pm on the Sunday night. 😯

Fortunately we knew someone else that could pick it up and he just about managed to complete it before the final deadline. But we lost all our profit and the recruitment consultancy just hid behind Ts & Cs…

johndoh – sounds as much a failure of project management as the developer? How can you get within 24hours of a soft launch and not realise there’s a significant problem?

pondo, maybe they’re trying to see what you’re like as a person, whether you can give a synopsis of your cv in a coherent and structured way etc

If someone said ‘Have you got my cv? Well it’s all on there you numpty!’ or words to that effect I probably wouln;t progress their application
Heh! That’s entirely fair enough, and I hope I wouldn’t be that blunt – I certainly wouldn’t expect a call back if I was! 🙂 It just rather took me by surprise, is all, seemed a bit of a pointless exercise. 🙂

I was in recruitment for 8 years or so, it’s a thankless job from both sides, clients whinging about the cost of paying for a exactly the candidate they asked you to find and candidates whinging that YOU didn’t get them the job.

Yeah, I can imagine, in all fairness. Mebbe I need to remember that a bit more. 🙂

ohndoh – sounds as much a failure of project management as the developer? How can you get within 24hours of a soft launch and not realise there’s a significant problem?

Agreed – we were a young an inexperienced company and were out of our depth, naïvely believing that the agency’s recommendation meant he knew what he was doing.

Still we have learnt now. So no agencies and we manage things properly.

EDIT: And as I said, there was much of the work there, he just didn’t have the skills to put it together properly so someone else had to (to put it into perspective, several months work was done, it took a week to fix the bugs). But it was a week we had to pay top whack to another developer and as I said, the recruitment agency just washed their hands of it – they didn’t care that he walked away from the project days before handover.

Still we have learnt now. So no agencies and we manage things properly.

*likes*

What skills are you looking for, johndoh? I might know some poeple who might be able to help lastminute…

edit – oops – just seen you found someone…

Rachel

You never know when you might want them to find you a job

Won’t make any difference. That particular profession and market is so cut-throat and unethical that if you are looking, they’ll take you on – no matter what the ‘previous’.

Front end developer – HTML5, CSS3, advanced WordPress, Git, Sass, jQuery, good understanding of building with progressive enhancement in mind.

Based in Yorkshire.

Rachel – that was another person, a long time ago (that I was moaning about). The position we are looking to fill this time is very different to that cacophony of hell.

pondo, maybe they’re trying to see what you’re like as a person, whether you can give a synopsis of your cv in a coherent and structured way etc

This.

I get some excellent CV’s on my desk that tick the boxes for a role, and sometimes when I actually talk to the candidate, they come across awfully and have very few social skills. The only way we can judge your ability to impress/hold your own at interview is to engage you in conversation. As we don’t know you’re into mountain biking, we can’t talk to you about that, but we can have a conversation on what we do know about you, which is essentially what’s on your CV. 😉

Why would they stand in your way? If you are a *reasonable* match for the role, then you will be put forward to the client and they will have the ultimate decision about your suitability.

For senior or technical roles agency staff dont understand what the client wants in sufficient detail so its right that they often act as a block. You example of “engineering” covers a huge range and it would be simply impossible for you or your team (particulalrly as you are not even working in the sector) to assess somebodies suitability for a job.
I was once interviewed by an “IT expert” from an agency as the recruiter conceded that they did not have the technical know how to judge my responses. I was then asked the most inane questions by a half wit “sales type” bloke which made the whole process laughable.

I’ve often had to explain to recruiters exactly what an AS400 is, about the difference between SWIFT messages and MQSeries messaging, all about the different versions of RPG and how it’s different to CL. Generally, I’ve found that until you ring a recruiter they wont read your CV.