Recruitment Consultants / Agencies - Love 'em or Hate 'em

why-o-why

Not to tar all recruitment consultants with the same brush, but are these self-aggrandising, primordial slime buckets not the most patronising bunch of corporate retards on the planet?

I’ve been to a few recently, have a few job offers in the back pocket, and the calibre of people talking to me from places like Prosperity and CPL was fab. But Jesus H Christ, Right Fit Recruitment, Grafton, Orange – where the feck do you did you learn your trade?

I’ve never met such a bunch of sanctimonious, hyped up little Hitler’s with such an ill-conceived concept of their importance. Do they really think their robotic questioning; their attempts to manage my expectations to accept a ****house job, and their “Doctor Knows Best” manner will wash.

Feckin Amateurs. Don’t Tell Your Father How To Have Children.

But do we/I say this to them? No. What do we all do, we fecking pander to the feckless absurdity of it all. If I wanted career advice I’d rather consult Mickey Mouse.

I don’t think recruiters are so stupid as to not realise this little dance we do – so let’s agree. Shut up and listen to what I tell you, fetch me the goddamn job specs, send the company my CV, pick up your cheque after I ace my interview – without your bubblegum pop psychology interview tips. That’s all you gotta do, like most jobs a feckin monkey could do it. It’s just a shame there’s such an abundance of horses arses in the sector.

[FONT=&quot]Has anyone else had any experience like this, or do I just attract those with a paper-thin grasp on reality? :mad:
[/FONT]

Dudess

I went to one well known agency and they spent a few hours chatting to me, I went to another one and they just sat me down and said "right, we have x, y and z". I found the first crowd far better and they were also the ones who secured me the job.

So no, I didn't feel they should shut up and listen to what I told them. I found their advice great.

chump

be done here a lot

You're dead right though

Incredibly inept majority

Raekwon

Flashharry are you making new accounts so you can start another 'Recruiter's are w@nkers' thread? If not........then tar away young man because the vast majority of recruitment 'consultants' are w@nkers!

why-o-why wrote: »

But Jesus H Christ, Right Fit Recruitment, Grafton, Orange – where the feck do you did you learn your trade?

Jesus H Christ was a carpenter so I'm guessing he learnt his trade in a woodwork school close to Bethlehem.

why-o-why

Well that's just pants. Recruitment Consultant Rage is so prevalent it's considered old hat. Typical. We ought to be careful you know, evil triumphs when good men do nothing.

That's what Jesus would say.

MIN2511

hmm... tough one here, recently when i was on the market i signed up to at least a dozen i found out that they became really lazy after the first 2 days.. No follow ups, no consistency and no imagination hence I got my current job myself...
So I would say, I couldn’t be bothered with them.

billy the squid

In my experience, the vast majority of recruitment agencies are nothing more than personal data harvesters. They flood sites like monster and irishjobs with 20 or 30 posts advertising the same bloody job.

The ones I would despise the most would be IRC Richmond and Grafton. Dozens of times I have applied for positions with these and I'd get a PFO without even an interview, and this is with seven or eight years work in one employer behind me.

Stay as far away as possible from jobs offered by agencies where you remain an employee of that agency. There are opportunities out there where the agency is only hired to find you and once you get a job, you become a direct employee of the client company.

BostonB

In my experience most of them are simply sales people. Very few are experienced in recruitment itself. You use them, then forget about them.

Eoin

Having just changed jobs, I was dealing with a good few of them recently. I don't really pick an agency and see what they have, I look at the jobs I'm interested in on irishjobs.ie etc, and contact whoever the agency is. Unfortunately that means having your agency with any number of agencies just to get the details of a vacancy, which I'm not 100% comfortable with.

The agent with whom I got my new job was excellent (FRS Recruitment). She kept in regular contact, and had a 30 minute chat with me the night before the interview to go through the company's interview procedure, the type of questions they ask, their technology stack etc. She texted me the evening after to ask how I got on. She also sent me a few other roles that would have been suitable as well, so it didn't seem as if she was just desperate to fill that role.

The main problems I had with the other agencies were the amount of jobs that were no longer available (they blame the job sites themselves for not taking them down). Other problems were probably down to the companies themselves - vague or just incorrect job descriptions - e.g. "web developer" in one case meant a marketing person who would "develop" the growth of the site. In most cases they were polite and relatively helpful, but if they didn't have something suitable for you that moment, forget about it.

pclancy

I worked for a well known agency for nearly a year but left due to the long hours, ****e commute and i was sick of dublin so moved home to save before going abroad.

The Majority of people ive met in recruitment just want to do a good job, earn good money and have some fun. They dont have personal vendettas against candidates but people on the outside presume its the consultants own idiocy that means they dont get the job or interview. You're up against a lot mainly HR depts from hell and other agencies working the same roles so its not an easy job. The majority of people working in IT recruitment wouldnt know a thing about IT, its a sales job where people are the product so they dont really have to but obviously when you realise that as a candidate it sucks.

You have to remember though agencies are always working for their clients not for you, you're not paying them anything so they'll always be looking for people for certain jobs not good jobs for people. You just have to spread your CV between a few agencies and do the best interview you can. If they dont get back to you or screw you aroudn, feck them theres many decent agencies out there.

I'll never do it again though I never screwed anyone over and I did get some people some great jobs but if you're heart and soul isnt into cold calling, selling people into companies and sitting at a desk from 8:30-6pm forget it! Great social life though

Baby4

This post has been deleted.

Eoin

Baby4 wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

It's generally a percentage of the starting salary of the role, as far as I know. So, for another role, they could spend ages vetting candidates and all that for the same price.

run_Forrest_run

talk all ye want but I see them as a bunch of incompetent idiots who have no real skills they can apply to any 'real' job and rely on acting like corporate sluts to make money off the back of others.
I know a few people in recruitment and I can honestly say they ended up in it because they are useless at doing anything else and just rely on cheap small talk.
I mean seriously, can anyone tell me of any third level courses aimed at training and educating people for the recruitment industry? I would be very surprised because it is a mickey mouse industry.

pclancy

Theres nothing trainingwise really no It is a mickey mouse industry, but one of the largest sales ones.

Feewise what other industry compares with you doing so little work and getting so much reward? EG

Canvass a company and get a job on, advertise, review CVs and forward the decent ones to the client. Arrange interviews. Thats it. For that you could get paid between €2000 and €30000. What other industry has that kind of profit margin? Its insane money. Therefore as a consultant you can earn a huge amount of money by simply getting good at the jobs you work on, treating people well and know the industry well. If you put in the sales work and the hours people make a fortune. That's the attraction. some people think its ethical some dont but the main thing is it makes a lot of money therefore recruitment will always exist. I made some great friends and worked with some great people but it wasnt for me as I just cannot push myself to beleive that that work is worth the money paid for it.

I never seen the point in people complaining about them though because Ive personally no problem with using them to get myself a job, if the company want to pay 15grand for me so what? If you come across ones that mess you around or dont get you a job just move on, theres plenty out there.

I love being out of it though IT doesnt drive me insane with excitment but it beats calling 50 companies a day to see have they any need for a J2EE developer.

Poppers1888

We all have a job to do like everybody else, this is a very fast based role, you get loads of applicants everyday, you call back the relevant ones , talk about their options, talk to clients about candidates you have that may suit them, fully brief candidates before interviews. Constantly do sales calls for roles and candidates.
As someone said above that we make €4000 for a role - we dont personally but the company might - we havge to post the ads on all the job boards and papers, go through hundreds of candidates - which saves their HR company from doing this, pre interview everyone.
If we dont get back in touch with you, it may be because we have had no feedback from the company but in all fairness it would be pretty impossible to contact every single person that contacted us - people who have skills apply for roles they want - but we still have to read over every cv.

You really think we do nothing all day except deciding how to piss all the candidates off - your very wrong - we are just doing a job like everyone else

why-o-why

I know I started this thread, but I have a confession; I used to be in recruitment with a prominent agency. People sometimes say you become the things you hate huh? But here are some of the things that went on, you can see why I left, now decide if it’s ethical:

1. If you were good looking you got the better jobs because you made us look good.
2. If you didn’t have an Anglo-Saxon-come Irish name we skipped your CV.
3. If you were Black, Asian or had a common Irish accent we ignored you.
4. Large – and I mean high profile Multinationals right through to Paddy’s Motors all discriminate through us – no woman, no old people etc.
5. People in general wanted 20 – 30 year old white, male, Irish, graduates – god help you if you didn’t measure up to any of those categories.
6. We’d pretended we had more jobs than we did – but really we sent you forward to the one of three jobs we had and pretended was a glorious fit.
7. Photos on the CV – we took the piss.
8. We always used to talk about how we wouldn’t do half the jobs we sent people out to because we already knew they crap and no-one hung around longer than 6 months.
9. We ‘sexed up’ people’s references, good for you, bad for client.
10. We asked questions pretending that we listened to your answers, but really just made you jump through hoops so you’d appreciate the job when you finally got told what it was.

[FONT=&quot]It was truly horrendous, so glad to be out of it. If I wanted to be a racist, sexist, sanctimonious, holier than thou dikchead I would have been a cop. Feck ‘em all.:mad:[/FONT]

pclancy

Lol

Eoin

Poppers1888 wrote: »

If we dont get back in touch with you, it may be because we have had no feedback from the company but in all fairness it would be pretty impossible to contact every single person that contacted us - people who have skills apply for roles they want - but we still have to read over every cv.

Bollocks, there's absolutely no excuse for not firing off a courtesy email. A lot of the complaints people seem to have about the hiring process is being left in limbo and not hearing back one way or the other.

watna

I work in recruitment (not in an agency though, it's in-house) and I write back to everyone that applies for a job, even if it's just an email to say you don't have the right experience but thanks for applying. I think people really apppreciate knowing where they stand.

I can see how recruitment agencies have a bad rep. The market is seriously crowded. I would say, on average I get about 5 or 6 phone calls a day from agencies trying to provide candidates for me. We don't use agencies, it says so on all our ads but they still call. At first I was very polite but I've got much more short with them recently.. they're just wasting my time really. Thankfully I've never worked for an agency and had to cold call clients, it must be horrible!

pclancy

eoin_s wrote: »

Bollocks, there's absolutely no excuse for not firing off a courtesy email. A lot of the complaints people seem to have about the hiring process is being left in limbo and not hearing back one way or the other.

Completely agree, IMO this is the single biggest problem with the industry, lack of communication with candidates. All it takes is a simple email or quick call to say sorry you weren't selected for interview or sorry they've gone with someone else and its something I tried to do myself and get others to do more of. It often falls on deaf ears though, but it really annoys me as it should be common courtesy.

pclancy

watna wrote: »

...cold call clients, it must be horrible!

That part of it was horrible and most agencies give their staff targets of how many canvass calls per day, its mostly pointless as well as each companies being hit by loads of agencies every day. Soul destroying.

watna

pclancy wrote: »

That part of it was horrible and most agencies give their staff targets of how many canvass calls per day, its mostly pointless as well as each companies being hit by loads of agencies every day. Soul destroying.

It's true. I get so many phone calls from agencies and I've never given any of them business. The cold calls muct work though if they all do it.

monkey24

why-o-why wrote: »

I know I started this thread, but I have a confession; I used to be in recruitment with a prominent agency. People sometimes say you become the things you hate huh? But here are some of the things that went on, you can see why I left, now decide if it’s ethical:

1. If you were good looking you got the better jobs because you made us look good.
2. If you didn’t have an Anglo-Saxon-come Irish name we skipped your CV.
3. If you were Black, Asian or had a common Irish accent we ignored you.
4. Large – and I mean high profile Multinationals right through to Paddy’s Motors all discriminate through us – no woman, no old people etc.
5. People in general wanted 20 – 30 year old white, male, Irish, graduates – god help you if you didn’t measure up to any of those categories.
6. We’d pretended we had more jobs than we did – but really we sent you forward to the one of three jobs we had and pretended was a glorious fit.
7. Photos on the CV – we took the piss.
8. We always used to talk about how we wouldn’t do half the jobs we sent people out to because we already knew they crap and no-one hung around longer than 6 months.
9. We ‘sexed up’ people’s references, good for you, bad for client.
10. We asked questions pretending that we listened to your answers, but really just made you jump through hoops so you’d appreciate the job when you finally got told what it was.

[FONT=&quot]It was truly horrendous, so glad to be out of it. If I wanted to be a racist, sexist, sanctimonious, holier than thou dikchead I would have been a cop. Feck ‘em all.:mad:[/FONT]

So when you say "we" did you take part in these actions. If so why ?. You surely had the option to just say "no" and get another job. I am sure all agencies don't operate like this, you gave two examples of ones who helped you get a job. Oh hang on, so you actually found some of them helpful so perhaps the "Feck em all" is a little over the top.

I don't get your point really. You start a post bashing all people who work in recruitment and then take the morale high ground because you used to work in what seems like, the worst agency of the lot.

If you have a bad experience with one of them don't use them, there are literally hundreds of ones to choose from. Better still get off your ass and look for the jobs yourself. If your reply is, well some roles are only through the agencies, then get the name of the company who uses them and send your oh so elegant mail to them !!!

By the way I don't work in recruitment (I used to for a brief period) so have no vested interest.

mikemac

why-o-why wrote: »

1. If you were good looking you got the better jobs because you made us look good. WTF? In a non-client facing role who cares how you look? Not everyone is good looking but everyone can be groomed and presentable
2. If you were Black, Asian or had a common Irish accent we ignored you. Common Irish accent? Do you mean most people. Or is this a working-class accent you mean?

Ok, believe it or not, I understand most of the points on your list and while it isn't right, I don't that it doesn't go on.

Can you explain these two?
Like you say companies want Irish graduates but they don't want common Irish accents?

shantor

the first recruitment agent I went to when I was about 20, kept me waiting for 20 mins, then in the interview room, told me to sit up straight and take the chewing gum out of my mouth.. then he told me he had a job as a shoe polish merchandiser and that with my qualifications that I was stretching for the role.. .fricking twat

why-o-why

micmclo wrote: »

Ok, believe it or not, I understand most of the points on your list and while it isn't right, I don't that it doesn't go on.

Can you explain these two?
Like you say companies want Irish graduates but they don't want common Irish accents?

To answer your questions, firstly I agree with you it shouldn’t matter but how good looking you are – but people who were we described as being able to “present well”. This is basically code in the industry for “not a minger”, and trust me, even in non-client facing roles it counts for a lot. Remember Keats’ words “A thing of beauty is a joy forever”. I’m afraid it gets you a foot in the door over us mere mortals.

And when talking about the common Irish accent, I meant the sort where a person still has that knacker twinge in their eye. I’m afraid it wasn’t going to wash in corporate Dublin, not for this particular agency.

At the risk of mirroring the “I’m not racist but…” turn of phrase, but I do have friends is the recruitment industry still and they’re fantastic people. But some people I’ve met recently, bloody hell. The arrogance, the cheap suits, the Cheshire cat grins…

At the end of the day, why go to a recruitment consultant, when you could hit yourself in the face with a hammer?