Recruitment agencies

Summerjones

I've never applied to one before but I was looking through irishjobs.ie and came across two jobs that I would be interested in so I applied for them....just wondering what the deal is with recruitment agencies, what can I expect when they ring me? Do they interview me? Or send me on the interview? How does it work usually? Thanks.

stepbar

Generally treat Recruitment agencies with caution, they dont really care. All they really care about is getting in a stack of CV and using it as a sales pitch to get companies on board e.g "O we have 2000 people looking for a job, we will get someone for the role no problem, in fact here is 10 CV's that came in today". That sort of crap. As well as that you have to be careful that the job you have seen is not advertised by multiple agencies, chances are there is no job at all / the company is not using recruitment agencies and all they are doing is putting up an ad in the hope that they find the right person, sell the abilities of that person to the company and therefore collect 5k for their "work".

If you are applying for a job through an agency make sure that the job spec matches your CV i.e if they say that you need microsoft office say you have experince in it. If you dont lie. They usually look for a candidate that ticks all the boxes or one that matches all the keywords that they've highlighted. Otherwise you could be waiting a very very long time for them to call you back. I take you can tell by now that I dont really like recruitment agencies. It would be nice if they would acknowledge that fact that you sent in your CV but the majority of them dont...

Uuuh Patsy

Recruitment agencis are utter crap. A waste of time. And dont be waiting around for them to ring you. They never do. Its like they are doing you a favour or something. The best thing you can do is read the advertisement again and see if you can figure out who the company is and send your CV direct.

Summerjones

Thanks...let's just say do they actually ring though, what am I likely to be asked?

stepbar

If they do ring its likely that they will ask you to pop by for a interview.... <cough> chat more like :rolleyes: . Usually they give you their card and send you on your way. Only the lucky ones get a second call back and an possibly interview. I rem looking for a part time job in IT a while back, went in and ur man gave me a 10 question test. I answered 4 correct questions and then 5 minutes later he tell me Ive got the job!!! No in depth interview no nothing. Then he rings me back a few days later to tell me "A well actually you have to do a full weeks training for the role" knowing full well I couldnt committ to that due to college. Thats the sort of **** that goes on in Recruitment agencies. As another poster said try and figure out the company who is actually looking and send it direct. Best way to do this is ring up the recruitment agency!!!

Summerjones

Ok thanks...I didn't realise they were that bad! And there's so many of them too!

stepbar

Thats the problem there are too many of them! Christ I could set myself up as a recruiter in the morning, thats how farcical it is!!! Be warned, they are only in it for one thing, the money and they couldnt care less if you get a job or not as long as they get paid for their "hard work".

gustavo

Yeah Ive had two phone calls from agencies about my forwarding on my cv for jobs this week saying that the company would ring me that day regarding interviews of course they never did

Elara Lady

hi guys,

maybe i was just lucky but i was looking for a new job and a Recruitment agency contacted me, well to be honest a few did but anyways this one agency where great.... they rang me and talked about a few things, what i wanted to do and the like. im working full time so it wasnt possible for me to go intothe agency to meet anyone but they where fine about that. so the next day i had a call telling me about this job that had come up if i was interested, they arranged the interview and again rang me and told me what to expect, what questions i would be asked.... etc etc, so i goes for the interview and those questions did come up, it went well and i got a second interview with them, the agency again told me all the detials, what to expect, all about the MD that would be doing the interview.... and i done that interview....the following day the agency rang me to say i gotten the job.... that was it. from the first interview to the day i got the job was 2 weeks and everyday there was either a call from them, well from this one guy or an e-mail asking how i was feeling, was i confident, was i pleased with how it went, did i have any questions, was there anything they could do to help...and if they werent doing that they where finding out from this new company how they felt i did and giving me feed back, i wasnt in the dark about anything.....

but as i said maybe i was lucky, this was my first time dealing with an agency but i had heard the horror stories...... but it worked for me.

Kivun Sotilas

Summerjones wrote:

I've never applied to one before but I was looking through irishjobs.ie and came across two jobs that I would be interested in so I applied for them....just wondering what the deal is with recruitment agencies, what can I expect when they ring me? Do they interview me? Or send me on the interview? How does it work usually? Thanks.

In my case, they ring me non stop. Very annoying, changed my phone number to stop them calling me and refuse to give the new one out now.

Also beware, I have had this happen many times. I apply for a specific job, you cannot apply for it without signing up for the agency. So I go there for their little interview thing and sign up then I am told that the job I initially applied for has been allocated now. You have to be specific with them because they really do not care about you. They just want the money they get for placing candidates in positions.

joker77

I was last out of work and looking for a job 5 years ago, after coming back from Australia. I sent out my CV to loads of agencies, but ended up getting a job after sending a CV in directly to a company.

One of the recruitment agencies gave me my first call-back there a few months ago - OVER 4 YEARS TOO LATE!!! What the f*ck were they thinking ringing me then???

stepbar

Elara Lady wrote:

hi guys,

maybe i was just lucky but i was looking for a new job and a Recruitment agency contacted me, well to be honest a few did but anyways this one agency where great.... they rang me and talked about a few things, what i wanted to do and the like. im working full time so it wasnt possible for me to go intothe agency to meet anyone but they where fine about that. so the next day i had a call telling me about this job that had come up if i was interested, they arranged the interview and again rang me and told me what to expect, what questions i would be asked.... etc etc, so i goes for the interview and those questions did come up, it went well and i got a second interview with them, the agency again told me all the detials, what to expect, all about the MD that would be doing the interview.... and i done that interview....the following day the agency rang me to say i gotten the job.... that was it. from the first interview to the day i got the job was 2 weeks and everyday there was either a call from them, well from this one guy or an e-mail asking how i was feeling, was i confident, was i pleased with how it went, did i have any questions, was there anything they could do to help...and if they werent doing that they where finding out from this new company how they felt i did and giving me feed back, i wasnt in the dark about anything.....

but as i said maybe i was lucky, this was my first time dealing with an agency but i had heard the horror stories...... but it worked for me.

Did you stick a photo on ur CV, all this recruiter lovin sounds strange

Tom Dunne

Just to add my negative experiences with recruitment agencies - I changed jobs over the summer and really had my eyes opened with them.

They sent me a generic job spec which I found out was totally incorrect. They lied about the duration of the contract (said it was permanent, in fact it was fixed duration) and they also lied about the benefit package. I mentioned the fact that I had been offered another position and the agent went from being my best friend to "sales person who may possibly lose a sale". I found that before and after the interview the agent was my best friend, but once the job was in the bag, she didn't want to know me.

Luckily, my cynicism about recriuitment agencies allowed me to ensure that I had all the facts from the employer before I signed anything. The one piece of advice I would give about agencies is to treat everything they say with a pinch of salt. They are sales people, nothing more. They do not have your best interests at heart, their focus is the big fat commission cheque.

My employer asked me about my experiences with the agency and I told him straight. TBH, he lost the head with them. I had kept all e-mails from them and when presented with them, he couldn't believe it. The following week, I got a phonecall from a manager in the agency apologising.

Still, I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them. Avoid them where ever you can.

Elara Lady

stepbar wrote:

Did you stick a photo on ur CV, all this recruiter lovin sounds strange

lmao........ no i didnt.

not loven just pleased....

Tazz T

Quite frankly I don't know how they make an money. They don't seem to do anything.

eth0_

I was out of work for two weeks just now after finishing a contract, and the agency that placed me in the contract didn't really break their balls to put me forward for anything else, presumably because the contract wasn't renewed - through no fault of my own, there wasn't enough work to justify renewing.

While i've been out of work I went to see several agencies, who insist you go in to see them, which is pointless because they could just ask you the stuff on the phone. One of them I did two interviews for a big online company, got to the last 2 but the other person just pipped me. The manager in the company even said he'd offer me a job when one comes up in the next few months, but the recruitment agent hasn't bothered herself to call me back about other roles since!

And I haven't heard from any of the ones I took the time to go in and visit after they requested a meeting.

They don't even read your CV, i've been rung by several agencies wanting me to go for a Java programming job, presumably because it says on my CV that I did some Java in college...5 years ago! I've never listed Java experience in my work experience, yet they still wanted me to go for interview. If they don't even have basic knowledge of the sector they're recruiting for....

Basically, recruitment agencies are 95% scumbags. They're basically sales people. I assume they're working mostly on comission because they don't give a sh*t about you once you're placed in a job or once you've been turned down for even one job they put you forward for.

Even the contracts I have managed to get this year have been laughable, they're described as sys admin positions but I seemed to spend most of my time doing helpdesk work like building PC's.

comer_97

i had a contract end about a year ago, my agency still haven't contacted me to tell me i wasn't being renewed!

Kivun Sotilas

Tazz T wrote:

Quite frankly I don't know how they make an money. They don't seem to do anything.

No, it's us agency workers who do all the work. I saw a payment receipt from my agency and they get 9 euro for every hour I work.

I want a job directly from an employer.

Darragh29

I think some kind of formal code of practice, legal statutory instrument or legislation that lays down a minimum standard of service for the recruitment industry is seriously long overdue. I've dealt with several agencies this year and the standard of service that they provide is literally undescribable. Both my first name and my sirname are very unusual names, my first name is a rare Irish name and my sirname is originally Scottish/French, even though I'm 100% Irish and so are all my ancestors for as far back as I can trace (not that this should matter, where I or they originated from).

Recently I've been applying to several recruitment agencies and again and again I found I was getting no response, just nothing. I eventually got pissed off with this and rang up some agencies asking them what was going on with their business when employers were asking them to find a suitable candidate, according to the job description I was an ideal candidate and I hear nothing??? I should point out I'm extremely well qualified and have ideal experience for the positions I was applying for. One agency said, "listen, don't quote me on this but I can tell you for 100% certainty that the problem here is that when I look at your name, the first thing that I think is that your Asian, meaning you probably have language and/or work permit issues and are chancing your arm trying to get this job."!?!?!?!

This is the kind of woodenheaded unprofessionalism you are up against with employment agencies, I think its criminal that there is no repurcussions for this industry, for something as important as getting a job, these people can sh1t all over you and there is sweet nothing you can do about it...

Darragh29

eth0_ wrote:

I was out of work for two weeks just now after finishing a contract, and the agency that placed me in the contract didn't really break their balls to put me forward for anything else, presumably because the contract wasn't renewed - through no fault of my own, there wasn't enough work to justify renewing.

While i've been out of work I went to see several agencies, who insist you go in to see them, which is pointless because they could just ask you the stuff on the phone. One of them I did two interviews for a big online company, got to the last 2 but the other person just pipped me. The manager in the company even said he'd offer me a job when one comes up in the next few months, but the recruitment agent hasn't bothered herself to call me back about other roles since!

And I haven't heard from any of the ones I took the time to go in and visit after they requested a meeting.

They don't even read your CV, i've been rung by several agencies wanting me to go for a Java programming job, presumably because it says on my CV that I did some Java in college...5 years ago! I've never listed Java experience in my work experience, yet they still wanted me to go for interview. If they don't even have basic knowledge of the sector they're recruiting for....

Basically, recruitment agencies are 95% scumbags. They're basically sales people. I assume they're working mostly on comission because they don't give a sh*t about you once you're placed in a job or once you've been turned down for even one job they put you forward for.

Even the contracts I have managed to get this year have been laughable, they're described as sys admin positions but I seemed to spend most of my time doing helpdesk work like building PC's.

You hit the nail on the head here, the problem is there are too many unprofessional scum buckets in this industry. The sad thing is that they actually need a licence from the Dept. of Enterprise Trade & Employment before they can begin trading and operate as a recruitment agency, but there is no mechanism of making a complaint about any particular agency for the purposes of opposing a licence renewal, like you would find in the licenced premises industry for example. Once you have the licence, you only have to renew it yearly and it doesn't matter what kind of unprofessional and useless business you run, or who makes a valid complaint about your business, the Dept. of Enterprise Trade & Employment will issue you the licence once you pay the fee.