IT Recruitment Agencies Again

teasup

Folks,

How do IT recruitment agencies work? I mean they put non existent jobs on websites to get your CV and never make contact with you unless you hassle them. Do they get your CV to build up a database for when a real job does come up? Would they then not even advertise the job because they have plenty of CVs already?

I suppose the bottom line is are you better to just register with them and not pay much attention to job websites?

The Hill Billy

teasup - Use the search function & you will find many, many threads covering this topic.

MIN2511

It all depends, personally i would also research the recruitment agents...
There are so many threads on Recruitment agents here and a few of us have used some... check the threads and send PM's

good luck!

Eoin

teasup wrote: »

Folks,

How do IT recruitment agencies work? I mean they put non existent jobs on websites to get your CV and never make contact with you unless you hassle them. Do they get your CV to build up a database for when a real job does come up? Would they then not even advertise the job because they have plenty of CVs already?

Yes, I am convinced that they put up bogus jobs to get the CVs in for their database. They will advertise the job even if they have plenty of CVs because then they will get even more CVs in, they may get a better quality of candidate applying etc.

The thing that people seem to forget is that the agencies do not work for the job seeker. You are not their customer, you are simply a resource that their customer may want to "buy".

teasup wrote: »

I suppose the bottom line is are you better to just register with them and not pay much attention to job websites?

Definitely don't forget the job sites - not all of them are bullshìt adverts. When I was looking around last October, I'd say 30 - 40% of the IT jobs I enquired about were either filled or bogus. Of course, to get any details about the job, I had to send in my CV.

I remember about 8 or 9 years ago, you used to pick 2 or 3 agencies to get you a job, but these days you just have to accept that you are going to have to send your CV to lots of agencies; some (many?) of them will be a complete waste of your time.

AARRRGH

I know for a fact they put fake jobs on job websites.

Roughly this is how they work -

1. Agency places real and fake job adverts on jobsite to retrieve CVs / Agency pays jobsite to browse CV database to retrieve CVs.
2. Agency cold calls employers to see if they need help hiring staff.
3. Agency sends CVs collected in step 1 to the employer.
4. Agency collects 15% - 30% commission for every person hired by the employer.

If you're looking for a job, use a combination of jobsites, recruitment agencies and contacting employers directly.

board om

dublindude wrote: »

I know for a fact they put fake jobs on job websites.

Roughly this is how they work -

1. Agency places real and fake job adverts on jobsite to retrieve CVs / Agency pays jobsite to browse CV database to retrieve CVs.
2. Agency cold calls employers to see if they need help hiring staff.
3. Agency sends CVs collected in step 1 to the employer.
4. Agency collects 15% - 30% commission for every person hired by the employer.

If you're looking for a job, use a combination of jobsites, recruitment agencies and contacting employers directly.

for someone who 'supposedly' worked in the recruitment industry you dont know very much about it. either that or you worked for some dodgy agency.

the recruitment agency can not send your CV to a company without your permission so 'step 3' of the above desciption could not happen unless the recruitment consultant first called you and asked you would you be interested in going for the position.

secondly, the recruitment agencies do pay quite a lot of money to view CVs from the jobsite databases. but when a candidate puts their CV up on these jobsites they are usually contacted within a day or so of putting the CV up and if they are any good at their job they will have a new job within the month. so there would be no point in the recruitment consultant sending these CVs to a company months later becuase if the company decide they want to interview the canddiate and the candidate has already got a new job, then the recruitment consultant looks unprofessional for sending a CV of a candidate who isnt actually available.

basically how it goes is this:

recruitment consultant calls company who are advertising X position. they ask would the comapny like them to recruit for the position. if the company agree to use the recruitment agency then the recruitment consultant will put an ad on various websites advertising the position. if they havent got a good response within a couple of days then they will start proactively calling candidates form the databases and from job websites. they will ask if the candidate would be interested in going for the position. if they are then the recruitment consultant sends on the CV to the company. if they arent interested they dont. simple as that.

then there are companies who always use the same recruitment agencies. so they will call them every time they have a new job and ask them to recruit for the position. the same process then follows.

with recruitment it is a fast moving industry. if you get given a job by a company on a Monday, they want to be interviewing by the end of the week. if you havent got them quality candidates to interview by the end of the week then they will go elsewhere. so when you get the job on a monday you dvertise it that day. by wednesday you should have respnses and you should have made a few cold calls to candidates on your database. then the intevriews are set and that is it finished with and on to the next job.

so what most likely is happening is that candidates are applying for a job after it has been up on the website for a few days and that is too late. really you need to apply for the jobs within 48 hours of it being advertised. now there are some exceptions to that rule, like for instance Sales roles will usually be on-going so they will always take a good sales persons CV, or admin and customer care there are always call for. but with specific role, particularly IT you need to get that CV in within 48 hours or the job will be cold.

perosnally i find if you are thinking of moving jobs then your best bet is to go to a couple of angencies that specialise in your area of expertise, make contact with someone who has been working there for a while, and send them your CV. tell them what kind of comapny you want to work with, what salary you want, and what area of the city or country you will travel to. and then just telll them to let you know when something comes up. maybe email them once a week for a bit of banter so they remmber you. as soon as something comes up that you will suit you will be the first person they think of.

Eoin

board om wrote: »

but when a candidate puts their CV up on these jobsites they are usually contacted within a day or so of putting the CV up and if they are any good at their job they will have a new job within the month.

That's supposing that the candidate isn't the least bit choosy about their new role - it can easily take many months to find the right job - and yes, that's for people who are good at their jobs too. A manager I worked for was looking for a full year before he found the role he wanted.

This also works both ways as well; not all companies want someone in the door that quick, if it means compromising on the quality of the person they are hiring. It all depends on the company, the role & responsibilities etc.

board om wrote: »

so what most likely is happening is that candidates are applying for a job after it has been up on the website for a few days and that is too late. really you need to apply for the jobs within 48 hours of it being advertised. now there are some exceptions to that rule, like for instance Sales roles will usually be on-going so they will always take a good sales persons CV, or admin and customer care there are always call for. but with specific role, particularly IT you need to get that CV in within 48 hours or the job will be cold.

Having pored over the Irish Job sites at the end of last year, I can assure you that there were lots of jobs advertised by agencies that were not only filled months ago, but are also listed by different people in the one company. The agencies claim that they can't take down jobs from IrishJobs.ie themselves, to stop them from re-listing regularly and therefore bumping the jobs in the search results.

board om wrote: »

perosnally i find if you are thinking of moving jobs then your best bet is to go to a couple of angencies that specialise in your area of expertise, make contact with someone who has been working there for a while, and send them your CV. tell them what kind of comapny you want to work with, what salary you want, and what area of the city or country you will travel to. and then just telll them to let you know when something comes up. maybe email them once a week for a bit of banter so they remmber you. as soon as something comes up that you will suit you will be the first person they think of.

If you're serious about moving jobs, you can't be that complacent about it.

You really have to spread yourself around and accept that a good proportion of the jobs you are sending your CV in will be bogus.

There are lots of IT recruitment agencies, and there is absolutely no way you can be sure that a couple of agencies will have the jobs you are looking for. While they themselves may be a good agency, that has absolutely no bearing on what the jobs they are recruiting for are like.

By the same token, smaller agencies / agencies you've not heard of may well have a great job that would suit you down to the ground.

board om

eoin_s wrote: »

Having pored over the Irish Job sites at the end of last year, I can assure you that there were lots of jobs advertised by agencies that were not only filled months ago, but are also listed by different people in the one company. The agencies claim that they can't take down jobs from IrishJobs.ie themselves, to stop them from re-listing regularly and therefore bumping the jobs in the search results.

that is actually true. a lot of recruitment companies use systems that will put the jobs on to all the recrutment sites at once, but it means they have no control over them. for instance i used to get replies to jobs that i had closed off months earlier. loadzajobs are the worst for it. they keep the jobs up for months after they are ssupposed to be deleted. then irishjobs are the worst for giving the wrong salary details. if you put up a job for €30-40k then irishjobs would put it up as €50-60k. i had trouble with this a few times when companies saw it and thought you were spoofing their job spec when you werent really.

recruitment agencies dont have as much control over the job websites as people think. it is in the job websites interests to have lots of jobs advertised, and for good salaries. so i dont think it is any mistake that it happens.

Eoin

board om wrote: »

recruitment agencies dont have as much control over the job websites as people think. it is in the job websites interests to have lots of jobs advertised, and for good salaries. so i dont think it is any mistake that it happens.

It's as much in the interests of the agency to have the jobs - and higher salary - listed as well, but I have heard what you've said from other sources (bar the higher salary part).

board om

eoin_s wrote: »

It's as much in the interests of the agency to have the jobs - and higher salary - listed as well, but I have heard what you've said from other sources (bar the higher salary part).

the higher salary part is more irishjobs.ie. they say it is something to do with them not being compatable with the software agencies use. but i think that is BS. i had comapnies whose staff had seen ads and have gone mad becuase they thought their employer was offering €20k more for their job than they had paid them. it caused untold damage. tbh the last thing a recruitment consultant wants is a higher salary advertised on a job than is actually on offer, becase it means a higher level of candidate applies and the company wont see any of them becuase they are too expensive. also i have dealt with a lot of companies who will offer X salary, put the candidates through the 2 or 3 interviews, and then offer €10k less. and when you say it to them they just say "well that is all we are willing to pay". so it make the recruitment consultant look like a prcik. that mainly happens with sales roles. or they will offer them X amount starting and the other €10k in 3 months, but the extra €10k will never happen. some companys just dont know how to do fair business.

AARRRGH

Before going on the attack, why didn't you read my post first?

board om wrote: »

for someone who 'supposedly' worked in the recruitment industry you dont know very much about it. either that or you worked for some dodgy agency.

the recruitment agency can not send your CV to a company without your permission so 'step 3' of the above desciption could not happen unless the recruitment consultant first called you and asked you would you be interested in going for the position.

I said:

1. Agency places real and fake job adverts on jobsite to retrieve CVs / Agency pays jobsite to browse CV database to retrieve CVs.
2. Agency cold calls employers to see if they need help hiring staff.
3. Agency sends CVs collected in step 1 to the employer.

You decided to ignore step 2.

board om wrote: »

secondly, the recruitment agencies do pay quite a lot of money to view CVs from the jobsite databases. but when a candidate puts their CV up on these jobsites they are usually contacted within a day or so of putting the CV up and if they are any good at their job they will have a new job within the month. so there would be no point in the recruitment consultant sending these CVs to a company months later becuase if the company decide they want to interview the canddiate and the candidate has already got a new job, then the recruitment consultant looks unprofessional for sending a CV of a candidate who isnt actually available.

LOL

The CVs we get from agencies have been terrible. Over half of the people we've interviewed have either been lying about their experience or have used fake references.

Agencies (not all, but most) do very little, if any, checking to see if the employee is decent.

board om wrote: »

basically how it goes is this:

recruitment consultant calls company who are advertising X position. they ask would the comapny like them to recruit for the position. if the company agree to use the recruitment agency then the recruitment consultant will put an ad on various websites advertising the position. if they havent got a good response within a couple of days then they will start proactively calling candidates form the databases and from job websites. they will ask if the candidate would be interested in going for the position. if they are then the recruitment consultant sends on the CV to the company. if they arent interested they dont. simple as that.

So -

1. Agency cold calls employer.
2. Agency uses a combination of fake and real job adverts, and CV databases, to get CVs.

That's what I said. You just spun it so it sounds nicer.

You can post all you want about recruitment agencies being lovely and ethical, but no one here is going to believe you, because everyone here has experienced otherwise.

NOTE: I have worked in the recruitment industry for 6 years. It is not in my interest to piss on the industry. I'm just telling it as it is.

TalkingHorse

board om wrote: »

the higher salary part is more irishjobs.ie. they say it is something to do with them not being compatable with the software agencies use. but i think that is BS. i had comapnies whose staff had seen ads and have gone mad becuase they thought their employer was offering €20k more for their job than they had paid them. it caused untold damage. tbh the last thing a recruitment consultant wants is a higher salary advertised on a job than is actually on offer, becase it means a higher level of candidate applies and the company wont see any of them becuase they are too expensive. also i have dealt with a lot of companies who will offer X salary, put the candidates through the 2 or 3 interviews, and then offer €10k less. and when you say it to them they just say "well that is all we are willing to pay". so it make the recruitment consultant look like a prcik. that mainly happens with sales roles. or they will offer them X amount starting and the other €10k in 3 months, but the extra €10k will never happen. some companys just dont know how to do fair business.

Hi - I have used irish jobs for years. I know for a fact that employers have to chose salary bands themselves even if they have software. Also they have banned recruitment agencies from deleting jobs younger than 7 days. This was to stop recruitment agencies constantly posting jobs. Make sense?

Eoin

TalkingHorse wrote: »

Hi - I have used irish jobs for years. I know for a fact that employers have to chose salary bands themselves even if they have software. Also they have banned recruitment agencies from deleting jobs younger than 7 days. This was to stop recruitment agencies constantly posting jobs. Make sense?

But a lot of recruiters say that they can't delete any vacancies at all - that's why the already filled jobs are still up there. Would love to know who is telling the porky pies.

board om

TalkingHorse wrote: »

Hi - I have used irish jobs for years. I know for a fact that employers have to chose salary bands themselves even if they have software. Also they have banned recruitment agencies from deleting jobs younger than 7 days. This was to stop recruitment agencies constantly posting jobs. Make sense?

i can tell you for fact that even when you pick a salary bracket on irishjobs.ie they can stil display a higher salary bracket. and i have emails from suppport @ irishjobs.ie apologizing for this, and the reason they give for it is incompatability with the likes of Broadbean and other software used by recruitment agencies. and in fact i used to recruit for a company that were based in the same block as irishjobs.ie and when they saw their jobs advertised on irishjob with a higher salary than they were offering i explained why this was and they approached irishjobs about it who confirmed that this was an error on their side.

regaridng jobs not being deleted, this has been a long standing issue with job websites. one of the worst offenders is Loadzajobs. when i used to recruit i mianly looked after sales & marketing positions. but if a company i dealt with a lot asked me to recruit for another type of role i would do it as a favour, once i knew what was involved with the role (there is no point trying to recruit for an profession you know nothing about). anyways, i would put up a job for say a once off IT role for the company and usually id have it closed off in a week or 2. but for months later, and i mean many months, i would still be getting replies to the ad. now i would have delelted the ad from my end and i wouldnt have any use for the CVs coming in becuase as i said it would have been a once off role. i would be stuck explaining to candidates for months afterwards that the role was closed, and there was absolutley nothing i could do to stop that ad running. now if i had no use for the CVs then why would i bother leaving the job open? sure it just created more work for me having to call and email alll these candidates back to let them know the job was closed.

Eoin

board om wrote: »

now if i had no use for the CVs then why would i bother leaving the job open? sure it just created more work for me having to call and email alll these candidates back to let them know the job was closed.

If this was while working for an agency, then please give us some credit and don't tell us that getting CVs in the door regularly is anything but a good thing.

Raekwon

eoin_s wrote: »

If this was while working for an agency, then please give us some credit and don't tell us that getting CVs in the door regularly is anything but a good thing.

+1

board om

eoin_s wrote: »

If this was while working for an agency, then please give us some credit and don't tell us that getting CVs in the door regularly is anything but a good thing.

of course getting CVs is great thing, if you actually service the industry that the candidate is sending the CV for. otherwise it just makes you look unprofessional because you are getting CVs from candidates and you arent getting them jobs. for instance the company i recruited for wouldnt have done much in the way of IT recruitment. so as i said in my previous post if a company i dealt with quite a bit asked me to fill an IT position, i would have worked that one role for them. but apart from that i would have no other use for candidates who worked in IT. in a year i might have worked one IT role so what use are loads of IT CVs? another company i dealt with asked me to find them a Financial Controller. again we didnt have much call for financial controllers so that job would have been worked and closed off in a week or 2. all the excesss CVs that came in were pointless becuase it would probably have been another year before we needed a financial controller again, and thats if we even did need one again. so all the CVs would have gone to waste becuase a year or so later those candidates have found a job and they are no longer on the job market.

it would be like a vodafone shop being packed full of customers, but all the customers are actually looking to buy Meteor phones. you are getting loads of interest, but not in the area you actually specialise in so you cant do anything with them. and you arent going to start specialising in a new area just becuase you had one role that needed filling and now there are some extra CVs. you cant be all things to all people, so like any other business you find the areas that you can work and turn a profit from and you concentrate on them.