Do Recruiters Blacklist Candidates in Ireland?
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Everybody doesn't know everybody and usually references even off the record references are only sought before a hiring decision is made.
Generally in software or IT sales metrics and KPI's are clearly defined making it a fair playing field. It is a highly competitive space and to succeed you need to show that competitive edge. Software sales is a highly paid job in Ireland and therefore attracts good candidates.
Taking a relocation package and then being gone after 6 weeks would be a major red flag for any potential employer, recruitment costs aren't cheap and it means companies are less likely to take risks.0 -
That's all true. If a hiring conversation goes to a certain point and then all communication stops, bad references or bad reputation is the most likely reason.LollipopJimmy wrote: »Everybody doesn't know everybody and usually references even off the record references are only sought before a hiring decision is made.
I highly doubt if targets, KPIs and metrics are always fair in the US-American inside sales industry in Dublin. I'd rather say, you have to have the right accounts with the right potential from the start to actually get good projects to close. Building up the right pipeline and effective closing are your only guarantee for success.LollipopJimmy wrote: »Generally in software or IT sales metrics and KPI's are clearly defined making it a fair playing field. It is a highly competitive space and to succeed you need to show that competitive edge. Software sales is a highly paid job in Ireland and therefore attracts good candidates.LollipopJimmy wrote: »Taking a relocation package and then being gone after 6 weeks would be a major red flag for any potential employer, recruitment costs aren't cheap and it means companies are less likely to take risks.
I am guessing that in my case this red flag is so high up on a flagpole, that it can be spotted by others with considerable ease from a distance...
Also, I didn't leave the organization out of my own volition, I was fired after 6 weeks, not even having had access to all the company systems relevant for my job, not even having completed the all the required training courses, as these courses were only held on specific dates. The only reason I could tell is that between the two of us, the personalities would never have fitted, even though he interviewed me personally for the job and was rather impressed. "The best candidate I've seen today" was his response back then....
Yes, the cost of hiring might be high for one single candidate, but it's not that much for multi million dollar company. They flew me to Dublin, the picked me up by taxi, paid for one night accomodation in a good hotel....... My guess was that it was Euro 300 per candidate.2 -
I have a similar experience and probably not entirely alone with problem of blacklisting in Ireland.
I was once hired by a US American IT company. The job was inside sales or account management role with foreign language skills and sounded good, in line with my experience and halfway decently paid and some extra money for relocating to Ireland. I could offer a solid track record in inside sales and overachieving sales targets in a similar role for around 5 years in the UK.
However the salary for that position wasn't high enough for the Dublin housing / rental market, it was only good for some form of shared accommodation. This is a few years back, just before the pandemic hit. As I wasn't aware of the highly competitive rental market in Dublin back then, I was shocked, and had trouble finding a place to live in.
When I spoke to my manager about that issue, it only caused concern that he thought I wasn't serious about the job commitment. Within two weeks I was fired.
I've had trouble finding work in Ireland in other companies the IT inside sales field ever since, whilst others with a similar CV and experiences got jobs pretty straight.
Even though it's illegal to keep a "blacklist of candidates" I do believe it's done in Ireland, especially for those inside sales roles in IT.
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You took a relocation package and got terminate in two weeks, must of caused quite a stir among your former work mates... in a small country word gets around quickly.
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It wasn't that kind of stir you're referring to. It was actually 8 weeks I was with them in employment and passed all the entry exams either top of my class or among the top. The first 4 weeks I stayed in a hotel, the company provided. Then I stayed in AirBnBs while I conducted my apartment search in Dublin. It was a very frustrating event, as I viewed with possibly 30 or more and seemed to have no chance of finding a place to live.
Only with some luck somebody could have secured a flat share with total strangers, however that was difficult enough and could only succeed via some facebook group if the search was successful at all. Two weeks after I spoke with my manager about that challenge, I was history.
Honestly it wasn't even my choice, nor did I plan this and apparently, I wasn't exactly the only one who had gone down that road, but still a small minority of the new hires. They just wanted to get rid of those new hires who struggled with the housing market or were sharing difficulty about that challenge among team members. Help or any kind of support wasn't available, not even HR, where I raised the matter as I objected to my dismissal, had any influence.
Nearly two months of salary, plus relocation bonus, and that tax free after leaving the country, I would presume as well that on an island the size of Ireland word gets around quickly. Whether that's just word of mouth, bad reputation or a blacklist doesn't matter to me, as the negative implications to me are one and the same....
Post edited by tinytobe on1 -
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I don't think that recruiters in Ireland are sharing any blacklists among themselves. However I do believe that they keep files of either unsuccessful or other possibly troublesome candidates among themselves, - not sharing them, but keeping them on file and preventing them from putting them forth to their clients for any future hiring consideration.
I would suggest that employers do blacklist, especially if it's about firing an employee if an issue is unresolved and naturally that goes down to the external recruiter they employ. Unresolved previous employment issues about pay, around outstanding commission payments, relocation fees, travel expenses, job description being very different from the actual reality, it could be anything and ultimately, it's always the employee who has to bear the brunt, even if the mistakes were clearly made on the manager's or employer's side of things. Both parties having a point or believing they have a point, none really moving, not agreeing, a classical case of parting ways.
I once re-applied to that particular employer around 10 years ago after I was fired back then, and didn't get anywhere, - application was declined in an instant. Just to test, I changed the name, the e-mail and the phone on the CV, altered the employment dates a bit, but kept the main professional experience roughly the same, just to test, and bingo ! I got a response immediately, went through the interviews and then didn't accept the offer, as I was pretending to be somebody else.
It wasn't fair from my side, but out of curiosity, I just wanted to test their system.
Ultimately I think it's down each and every company if they blacklist a candidate and how they communicate this if they hire external recruiters for their staffing purposes.
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In an ultra-competitive business with high turnover of staff like recruitment, it would be very difficult to keep secrets about secret files or blacklists, whether internal or external. Details would leak out very quickly.
When you went for these interviews under the false name, were you not worried that you'd meet someone who would know you when hanging around reception? What did you put on the fake CV for the period with the company in question?
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I wasn't worried about anybody recognizing me. I had a thorough look at linked in and whether I knew any names. It's also been 10 years, and people move on. Sure, there could have been the odd female getting married, changing her name and not having a picture on the profile, but I ran that risk. Also the manager who fired me in that employment just after 6 weeks with the company back then was let go with considerable internal pressure for various other issues, so I was told by a former colleague. I also gained a bit of weight over the years and lost a bit of hair so looks wouldn't have given me away.
They never asked for ID during the process, and the CV was only changed as said, to reflect a similar experience, just different dates, and different previous companies who are competitors to each other. I wanted the experience to be as similar as my real CV. Also CVs get electronically scanned these days, if they recognize anything, but if nothing is recognizable, you move on to and through the interview stages. The intention of this was just to get an answer on whether I was blacklisted by them or not and since I very recently applied with my real CV and my real name, I then had an answer.
In the end, I got to the conclusion that if I would have legally changed my name as well, I would have succeeded in getting re-employed with them. However that legal name change wasn't worth the effort.
As said, I don't think that external recruitment and staffing agencies do keep and exchange blacklists among themselves, but various companies certainly have their own black-lists and probably to most likely communicate to the external recruiter on "whom they clearly don't want".
Ultimately, whether you're fired for a good reason, or whether you're fired because your manager is an incompetent idiot it sadly doesn't matter, HR matters are always designed for the company to be on the winning side. And if you understand some companies tricks and games and they know that you know them, they will never ever hire you.
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Most to nearly every bigger American IT company operating in Ireland give the employee the wrong impression about certain things. One of them is HR and the whole function of HR.
Upon getting hired, they constantly spread the Ask HR word or HR is your partner etc..., they have internal whistleblower and grievance processes, anti discrimination policies, nice work-life balance talk, even the gay and lesbian rainbow flag is part of it, giving the employee the impression HR is about fairness, correctness and that fairness is part of life in that organization and the organization is all about diversity and inclusion and no wrongdoing of any sort.
However the reality is very different, sadly. HR always fails if there are workplace issues, which are created due to bad management, problems then start to fester and linger around, and if then one tries to involve HR it's often too late.
In reality HR is only there to hire, to fire, and to make sure the company is protected from any lawsuits or potential lawsuits disgruntled employees bring upon the organisation.
Another issue is that direct management in inside sales organisations can do with their employees nearly everything they like, make their sales targets easy to reach, or impossible to reach, play one employee against the other, etc... Any complaints to HR are futile here and only give HR an early warning. And if one gets then unfairly dismissed, one is put on something like a blacklist. It's not "a list" per se, but an entry in the personnel file stating something like "do not re-hire". The whole process of ending up on such a "list" this is not a trial or a tribunal where opposing facts are presented and a fair decision is then made, but instead a "we can do it because we are the big strong organization".
American IT companies in Ireland often outsource the hiring process to recruitment agencies, often having one single point of contact who deals with them. They do also tell them, whom they want and whom the definitely don't want.
The inside sales industry in US American IT companies operating in Ireland is not only highly competitive, but also there is very high turnover, often of international hires, Italians, French, Spanish, etc..... Employees coming and going, for different motives ranging anywhere from unfair management, unreachable sales targets, or even if reached commission unpaid, to high housing cost in Dublin, thus there is always a good bit of hiring going on and the process of hiring is often remarkable fast and very streamlined if they want to or have to achieve their hiring targets.
If one is so creative to go to these lengths to change their names on a CV, then one would fall easily though the cracks of the do not re-hire notice of the former's employee file. It won't get you an employment contract but it will only confirm that this "list" in form of a do not rehire note exists.
Post edited by tinytobe on0 -
Recruiters absolutely have blacklists and I seem to be on it.
A while back I bailed on some interviews in dublin due to having a panic attack right before and then didnt answer my phone when the recruiters called me about it (wasn't really interested in talking about my anxiety issues with the recruiter). So now I dont get any responses when I apply to jobs posted by these recruiting companies, which is understandable. If I was in their position I would do the same.
So now I've been sending applications to jobs in NI and it seems like information about me has been widely shared because even though I have a strong CV and they ring me right away when I apply for a job they ghost me a few days later. They usually tell me they will share my cv with guys in dublin to see if they have any roles for me there, who then probably tell them to not deal with me, because I never hear anything back.
Recently I got done with one interview process I arranged through a belfast recruiter and everything seemed to go ok but then got randomly ghosted by him (and his colleague i was dealing with regards to another role). He didnt even tell me what the final response from the company was and didnt respond to my emails, I had to contact the HR lady directly and ask for an update.
I honestly dont even hold a grudge though, my anxiety has caused me to get into some ridiculous situations and I have even lost jobs because of it, so im used to dealing with this sort of stuff.
My only worry is that they will try to actively prevent me from getting jobs by slandering my name to companies. If I start to feel like thats whats going on I'll probably hire a solicitor and take it from there.
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I'm sorry for your situation, but your opinion is not a fact. Beyond opinion you have no material evidence at all to back you up and consequently a solicitor is not going to be able to help.
The fact of the matter is that agents work for their clients not you and once they have had a candidate accepted for a job, they are not interested in what happens to the other candidates. You can have a run in with an agent and as a result they may not want to deal with you or perhaps an entire agency may not want to deal with you. But the idea that they are actively contacting agencies blacking your name..... no that is not happening. How would they even know where you are applying for a start and how would you have got to the closing state.
The most likely reason people don't get a response is because they are either totally unsuitable for the positions they are applying for or they don't know how to write a resume that will pass the filters that are used these days to select candidates.
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Issues with management are never easy and a neutral look is always not liked. In a nutshell it's always the employees fault and manager's performance is always spotless, with all the irony attached. I also think that Ireland is way to small for many things, and in small places people always like to talk.
My advice, try London in the UK if a move to the UK is an option. They certainly don't blacklist there and even if they do, the negative impact is minimal. I've worked there for more than 10 years and had to leave several jobs due to grossly incompetent management issues but got hired straight on with other companies with considerable ease. Just upload your CV on various British job sites and you'll know the response is different than in Ireland.
I don't know about Belfast or Northern Ireland, but Dublin and the ROI are certainly a hotbed for blacklisting. I can tell you that with utter certainty, even if it's always denied by others.
Ireland is a small country and people know people. Even though the classical blacklist in form of a list is always denied, certain information is always shared, list or no list. Word just get's around in Ireland. In the UK they simply tend to "get on with it" easier, forget the past, etc....
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This should give you and anybody who denies blacklisting an idea, how blacklisting works:
(it's actually a functionality in most applicant tracking systems used by HR and recruiters)
Post edited by tinytobe on2 -
This doesn't surprise me a single bit. However this particular blacklisting function isn't unique to Ireland, it can be used in other countries as well.
One also has to understand the point of view of the recruiter, - who wants to put forward a candidate to their clients who's had some issues in a previous job, - regardless who's fault it is, as a recruiter one would have to deliver quality candidates.
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US-based provider, that doesn't have to worry about pesky things like GDPR. If they blacklist you in Europe using this, you'd be entitled to know that you're on their blacklist. Also, blacklisting based on email address isn't really the most effective way of blacklisting.
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If they don't want you for whatever reason they won't hire you, whether there is a blacklist in form of an XLS file or just a function to ignore a CV doesn't matter at all. It doesn't matter if you're in the US or in Europe, and especially Ireland and Dublin isn't the biggest place, if you know what I mean. Anybody who's doing a recruitment job would work with some kind of tool to build up a pipeline of possible candidates, have some search criteria for certain skills and experiences.
Employee-employer relations are never easy, never without any friction, especially if the job involves commission, a sales territory, accounts and sales targets and believe me, there is always a reason why employees leave or are managed or pushed out in whatever fair or unfair practice. And then people know people, people talk, they do their research, and as written Ireland is a small place.
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Yes and no, Ireland is indeed a small world, but recruitment is a big business with VERY high turnover of staff. No doubt people will gossip, but the suggestion in this thread that you multiple organisations sharing data illegally contravening GDPR, exposing themselves to very large fines, isn't credible. There would be a queue of former recruiters lining up to pi$$ on their former employers and drop them in it. You can't keep secrets like that.
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I didn't write it the way you're describing it. I wrote that a blacklist isn't necessarily a list or an xls file which gets passed around, but every recruiter can decide with which candidate he or she want's to put forward to their clients. The link to the Applicant Tracking system shows how a recruiter can blacklist a candidate which he or she doesn't want to put forward.
So even if you're in a high turnover industry, like recruitment, it can easily be that notes written down do get passed around, or people talk and gossip, word of mouth gets around, etc... Ultimately it's the recruitment agency's and recruiter's credibility which is at steak if they put forward candidates which had trouble with their previous employer for whatever justified or unjustified reason.
Also, good recruiters have their own established contact base and candidates they can work with.
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