Those cunning recruitment companies

GoneShootin

What addles me about recruitment companies is how they give a skant job description - just enough to get you interested. You contact them then - looking for a bit more information. Often perhaps to tailor the CV for the job application.

Anyway I did this with a certain recruitment company - simply asking WHERE in the COUNTY was the job going. Why should I apply for a job that may be too a commute. I didn't ask WHO was advertising the position, just WHERE.

The email I got back was along the lines:

"Hi, I didn't get your CV with your application. Please give me your CV and I will send you the job description".

I couldn't be bothered replying to the email, as clearly they never looked at my original request.

Anyone else experience this?

clairefrilly

some companies are very secretive about their recruitment . no idea why? but yes, I have found that trying to get the name of the actual emplyer from them cane be difficult . Why would they expect you to apply for a job you know nothing about ?:mad:

jjr80

Lots of agencies do this. The job could be made up in an effort to get your CV into them, I have experienced this in the past.
Chances are that when you send the agency your CV they will say you are over qualified and they will keep an eye out for a more "suitable" job for you. You will then regularly receive mails from the recruiter with jobs off no interest to you!

Saint_Mel

Also agencies can be a bit cagey about the company until after you submit your CV to them for the job as they dont want you to apply directly and cut them out of the loop.

The made up jobs are very annoying also. You spot a perfect job description, send in a CV, and then they tell you about every job except the one you actually applied for.

The one thing that really bugs me most though is agencies leaving adverts active on recruitment sites even after the vacancy has been filled.

Trapattoni

This has also happened to me in the past- quite annoying alright.

I think its more to do with the recruiter not taking you seriously unless they get what they want from you - your cv. Im sure theyve enough people enquiring each day that they can afford to demand a cv!!

Dudess

They have to do this in order to make money. Recruitment consultancy is pure sales and a CV is a lead. If they tell you anything at all that might lose your interest then that's a potential sale gone - possibly to one of their competitors. It's completely fair enough.

No, I'm not a recruitment consultant and I find plenty of stuff wrong with them, but not the above.

board om

the 2 main reasons that recruitment agencies dont like to give out the company name or detailed job description until they have seen your CV is this:

1. you may may not be job hunting at all and you may in fact be a recruitment consultant from another agency looking for a few business leads. if they give you the company name and job description then you could just ring the company yourself and say i heard you are looking to fill such a position and would you like me to send you some CVs?
remember, it is basically sales so leads are everything.


2. some companies ask that the recruitment consultant not disclose who the company are until they have screened the CV and met the candidate. only then can they say who the company is. some companies are funny like that.


as regards fake jobs on websites, i reckon some recruitment agencies do this but not all. tbh some job sites just dont take the jobs adverts down when they are instructed to do so by the recruitment agency so they could be up there for weeks or even months after the job is filled. everyone blames the recruiment agency but the truth is a lot of the time it is actually the job sites fault. afer all, it makes their site look better when they have lots of jobs on the site. and they never get the blame when the job turns out to be alreay filled, everyone blames the recruitment agency.

AARRRGH

The job didn't exist. They just wanted your CV.

board om

i cant understand all this negativity towards recruitment agencies. if you dont like using them then dont. simple as that. i know i have had a crap time with a few of them so i dont use those particular ones again. but i have also got some good positions through other agencies. so i cant really say they are all bad. like any industry you get your good companies and you get your bad companies.

the way i see it is if you are contacting a recruitment agency regarding a job then you are basically asking them for their professional assistance. for them to give you their professional assisance they need some more informaton other than is it an easy commute for you i.e. your CV.

if i called a recruimtent agency and before i even showed them my CV they started telling me about jobs that i might like, then i would think this eejit doesnt know or care what i want, they are just trying to sell me any job they have on their books. but if i send them my CV first and they take the time to read it and then come back to me with some suitable job descriptions that are actually relevant to my CV i would think they are actually doing what they are supposed to do. after all, they arent charging you for their service. i know they get paid by the company if they get you a job but realistically they could speak to 50+ candidates a day and not get a single one of them a job for one reason or another. so to offer a service to that many people every day and knowing after all the work they put in that nothing might come of it would be hard going by anyones standards. sure you could be registeretd with 20 differnt agencies and in the end your going to take the job becuase it suits you best, not because the recruitment consultant was helpful. there is no loyaltiy to the consultant.

and i would prefer that they came back and told me that they had nothing for me at present and that they will be in touch when they do have something rather than them coming back to me with a load of rubbish i have no interest in and that has no relevance to what my career is.

and i am sorry to say this but maybe when the recruitment consultant comes back and says that you are over qualified for a position but they will be in touch if something else comes up or that a position is closed, maybe they are politely saying that you are not suitbale for that particular role and they are tying to be polite about it without making you feel like crap. i would rather someone say that to me than have them say 10 other people applied for the position and i was the worst so they are not going to bother putting me forward. there is no point in crushing someones spirits unnecessarly.

just a thought.

DaSchmo

Unfortunately recruitment agents are a necessary evil from time to time. Some observations from my dealings with them:

From a client perspective: Most agents are chancers with no idea of your business requirements and will repeatedly fire totally unsuitable CVs at you in the hope that enough $h1t thrown at the wall will result in something sticking. Dont give these fools a second chance, try to build relationships with a small number of good agents that you can trust. If you can find any...

From a job seekers perspective: take no **** from the jumped up used car salesmen types - the dodgier outfits will try and shoe you into the crappiest jobs motivated purely by the self interest of their next commission cheque. Register with several agencies (dont let on) and make sure you only allow them to send your cv on once you know who they are sending it on to, thus eliminating the potential embarrassment of multiple copies of your cv being sent in to the same place. Let the agents do the work for you and dont be afraid to say "no" until they come up with the right position.

lostexpectation

Dudess wrote: »

They have to do this in order to make money. Recruitment consultancy is pure sales and a CV is a lead. If they tell you anything at all that might lose your interest then that's a potential sale gone - possibly to one of their competitors. It's completely fair enough.

maybe you might be more interested if you knew where the jobs was, and might not bother to purseue it if you don't know. sale lost that way too.

theyre ridiculously vague.

Saint_Mel

Talk about cagey!!!! Ironicially I had a call yesterday evening from an agency I was in contact with many moons ago, but found them to be rubbish. Called me out of the blue yesterday asking if I was still looking and they had a fantastic role that seemed to match all my experience.

I asked where the job was ... but they couldn't tell me ... until I submitted an up to date CV ... but they still claimed the job was perfect. So I asked for a job description so I could judge how perfect ... but alas, for privacy reasons, their client did not want details to be made public. :eek:

So I saaid ... "Let me get this right ... you client has a job opening ... but they dont want anyone knowing who they are, nor do they even want applying candiated knowing what they do or what the job even is"

Reply I got was ... "Well, umm, yeah. Its common practice these days"

So I ended up telling them to get the mystery company to offer me the job now as for privacy reasons I would rather they not know any details about me yet, but as the agency were so sure I was perfect, things should work out just great

Raekwon

Saint_Mel wrote:

So I ended up telling them to get the mystery company to offer me the job now as for privacy reasons I would rather they not know any details about me yet, but as the agency were so sure I was perfect, things should work out just great

Excellent

As ridiculous as your response might have sounded to the recruiter, they were basically doing the same to you. I really don't know how these bloody eejit's stay in business (good job lazy HR people!!!)

hunnymonster

It is very difficult to provide a CV for a job you know nothing about. I guess new graduates have limited experience so everything goes on their CV but as soon as I developed a range of skills I needed to trim my CV and the bits that get included are the bits that are relevant to a particular post. You can't do this when all you have to go on is

"general manager, Munster, salary negotiable"

Surely it's in the recruitment agencies interests to make sure I provide the best data I can?

pclancy

They wont give out job info without seeing a cv and you proving who you say you are, you could easily be another agency looking for work...whats the big deal? you're CV is probably already in their database anyway, they just want to check who you are.

But yeah, if you don't like em, don't use em.

hunnymonster

the big deal is that if I'm going for a management job my CV would show up my strategic, PM, economic type skills, if I'm going for a lecturing job my cv will show up my academic record including publications, students supervised, courses taught etc. I'm sure the training manager of Pharm.com doesn't give a toss that I can solve the Schrodinger equation, (s)he does care that I have qualification in academic content development and have worked in a regulated industry. I don't want to be put in a box by a recruiter who knows little about the variety of skills I have so a generic cv will not cut it.

Mikel

The job didn't exist.
Finance recruiters are notorious for this, they give a vague catch all description to fish for cvs, and then they carpet bomb the banks with them regardless of suitability.
It's a numbers game.

Saint_Mel

Is there any regulatory body that recruitment agencies are goverened by/affiliated to?
<rant>
I know there are some decent ones out there ... somewhere ... but there are lots of mickey mouse setups that give the entire recruitment industry a bad name.

IMHO there should be some policy to make advertisements as specific as possible, without giving away details the clients wish to keep private. Even location ... jobs with the location given as Dublin West/City Centre/South Dublin/Leinster .... For god sake which is it?

Fake jobs and jobs already filled is one of the most annoying things too, especially on the combined websites IrishJobs/RecruitIreland/Monster etc.

Who is updating/refreshing these adverts and can that be stopped?
</rant>

moverandshaker

Hi everyone

I have just been offered a job working for a reputable recruitment company

It would mean leaving quite a stable but tough working enviroment (also sales) and heading into the unknown

Can anyone advise me???

I would love to hear from anyone who has or is working in that area????

AARRRGH

I used to work for an online recruitment company.

Assuming you're good at sales, you'll make a lot of money! I recommend you give it a shot.

moverandshaker

Thanks for getting back to me

U say used to.................. Can I ask why you left????

How hard is the sell?????

moverandshaker

Thanks for your quick respose

You said used to..........do you mind me asking why you left?????

Just how hard is the sell???

AARRRGH

I didn't work in the sales side of things. I left for personal reasons.

Where I worked it was all cold calling. You know, ringing employers and asking if they need any help with their recruitment. I guess if you don't take the rejection personally, that's no bother.

I've heard of some people in the large recruitment agencies making more than 100k per year.

flash harry

Saint_Mel wrote: »

location given as Dublin West/City Centre/South Dublin/Leinster .... For god sake which is it?</rant>

You can blame the job boards for this for allowing AND recommending recruiters use the 3 areas thy're allowed.

All they'd need to do is do all the Dublin district numbers and think a little about the ones outside this loop (e.g. South County Dublin is quite big) and this would not be a problem. Also if they added say "on the dart", "luas red line" etc as alternative options it would help the jobseeker. So someone who say lived in Bray may not apply for a North Dublin role BUT would work in Killester because beside DART etc.....

bush Baby

moverandshaker wrote: »

Hi everyone

I have just been offered a job working for a reputable recruitment company

It would mean leaving quite a stable but tough working enviroment (also sales) and heading into the unknown

Can anyone advise me???

I would love to hear from anyone who has or is working in that area????

If you can sell and lie to almost everyone you talk to, then you'll do fine.