Recruitment Agencies...

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Hi all,

I posted my CV online with a few job sites on wednesday, last time I posted one online was quite a while back and I was just out of Uni and didn't get much of a response. I had a couple of missed calls on friday one from a recruitment agency called the Computer People and another from a guy from a consultancy company, I'm not sure if they're an agency. I've phoned neither back yet.

What the general Consensus with recruitment agencies? Anyone had any success with them? They were recruiting in Coventry, its a bit far for me without being able to drive.

Do people get much hassle after they post CVs on Monster? To be honest without experience I didn't think my CV would get me loads of calls, I only have an A+ Cert and a Degree!

 

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Scum of the Earth generally - on the same rung of society's ladder as Estate Agents and Lawyers as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately - and I'm only saying this for London as I've never bothered looking outside the M25 for work - you pretty mjuch have to use them nowadays as most places use agencies for recruitment.

 

It may not be related to you directly but is always worth a thought - have a look at a Freelance IT/Contractors forum - Linky - search on there for some of the names of these agents - you can get a feeling by what others say or experience from them.

From what it looks like, as zeb said, most IT roles seem to be only available via agencies - the unfortunate thing is some calls are purely fishing for their next company/manager name to advertise their (agencies) services too - very little about getting us a job.

That said, there are jobs out there so keep plugging for them and never undersell yourself!

 

Theres a lot out there that just farm your details from databases and give you nothing but grief, i still get mails about 'desktop support roles for 25k' lol

once you have a decent relationship / rapore with some of them though things generally work out ok, same can be said for any commision based staff, get to know your sales guy well and he will look after you, buy bugger all from him and he wont, simple maths really

 

How about this one then Phoenix - received in my inbox last Monday morning:

Good Afternoon,
My key client based in Surrey is currently seeking a 1st Line Applications Support Analyst to join their growing applications development team.
The ideal candidate will have a background in 1st line support/Helpdesk and have excellent communication skills and the ability to manage incedents and escalate issues. You will be working with bespoke applications and assisting the team. It is also necessary that the candidate have experience in ITIL processes and any knowledge of Team Foundation Server will be highly advantageous.
This is an excellent opportunity to work within a fast-paced, expanding team with excellent career prospects. If this sounds of interest please send me your CV as I have interview slots to fill! If this is not of interest to you please accept my apologies and instead feel free to advise me of what role you are seeking at the moment.
Salary - £18-22k - depending on experience


LOLOLOL

Despite NEVER having had a first line role (so probably without the requisite experience to do the job anyway) I haven't got a single CV anywhere online that says I would:

A - Work outside Central London
B - Take a role for less than £42k
C - Know what 'Team Foundation Server' is, let alone have experience in using it
D - Consider a 28k salary drop as an 'excellent career prospect'

That should give you an idea of the sort of 'tard you'll be dealing with Ropenfold - the best of British luck to you!

 

Thanks for the responses guys, I had the general feeling that would be the case, I'll probably give them both a bell to hear what they've got to say but I'm not sure if they'll be offering me desktop support jobs for 25K!!

I'm scrimping by at the moment on a temps pay about to probably go permanent in an uninspiring job for the money so I'd prefer to go from one permanent job to another permanent job. I'm tired of the lack of security to be honest, I can't be a temp anymore

 

unfortunately when dealing with recruitment folk, again like most commission based roles, you often get the new poorly experienced folks dealing with 1st/2nd line support type crap, who gives the high paying jobs with the responsibility to the new kid? no one!

once you get to a decent level you tend to meet the more experienced recruiters, still not perfect by a long shot, but they are all just trying to make a buck like the rest of us at the end of the day
personally I think they provide me a useful resource, if I'm blanket applying for roles as I'm in need, then they sort me out nice and quickly without the laborious process of manually applying for each role, if I'm looking for something specific i can do it myself and bypass them, job done

 

A lot of these agencies are just looking for "fresh meat" but I have encountered a few (along with a few real estate agents and lawyers) who were ok. My current contact job is through an agency and they've treated me quite well. That said, I still get a few phone calls and email from agencies that want me to accept 8 month temp assignments, sometimes hundreds or thousands of miles from where I live. I blow these off as not worth my time.

 

Phoned them both back, the pair of them were about as useful as an underwater hairdryer

Back to the drawing board.......

 

Recruiters have been hit and miss with me. Some have been horrible and some have been great. To be honest though, my wife has used them for her field (finance) and they've been pretty good (on average).

As much as a necessity as they are in IT, it’s even worse in finance. Unlike Lawyers and Real Estate agents, you can't just use one organization as representation as some companies have contracts with specific agencies and do business with them exclusively. So to get the most market penetration, you have to use multiple agencies.

 

Some really good advise there I might want to use, cheers Phoenix

I had my fair share of recruitment folks. When I was looking for work last year all three IT contract jobs I got where from recruitment agencies. And turned out great. However, Only the start of this year I been getting calls from the recruitments agencies. 9/10 are just wasting my time and patience and going through techy questions over and over again.

You can also trying applying directly through the company and bypassing the agencies. it just seems most of the IT job have been eaten by the recruitment agencies.
Best of luck with the the job search.

 

As bad as recruiters are for the people looking for the job, I’ve heard bad stories for companies too. An IT Manager posted on a job site (Dice, Monster…) was bombarded with resumes from recruiters.

He discarded the resumes without ever looking at them as he didn’t want to use a recruiter. Any resumes received directly from candidates were valid options. Once he finally picked the candidate to hire, he got a call from a recruiter.

The agency stated that the potential hire was their client and they had already sent the resume via email over a month ago. Furthermore, if the candidate was hired fees would be owed to the agency.

The decision was made to use a preferred recruitment agency to deal with the politics of new hires.

 

Certainly the company I work for is strangleholded (strangleheld?!) by HR; all recruitment has to go through our in-house recruitment agency which then liaises with external recruitment agencies. Any direct recruitment (i.e. bypassing them) is seen as a breach of contract, for which we'll be fined. This is in London - I imagine this is a fairly typical setup (apart from the inhouse recruitment agency bit).

Apart from agents phoning about jobs which bear no relation at all to my CV, I've had agents cheerfully admit they don't understand the job spec in the slightest and have no idea what they're talking about. I've also had agents hang up on me for refusing to spend half an hour or more of work time being grilled by them for a job I probably don't want anyway. I've also had agents push me into interviews for jobs I was hopelessly underqualified for. Almost none have ever actually given any feedback following interviews, either.

On the recruitment side, I've been bombarded with CVs which aren't remotely suitable for the job or indeed relevant. (And in many cases, not even valid applicants but just CVs off their database).

As zebulebu said, they're scum - but an unavoidable evil when jobhunting, alas. Though I always contracted till a year ago, I'd recommend going permanent if you can - means you no longer have to hassle with them after you start your job!

 

Yeah - I've heard variations of that story too. They have absolutely no leg to stand on - if it was me I'd tell them to poke it and interview the candidate anyway. They don't have any grounds for 'threatening' - but that's what they invariably end up doing when things aren't going their way because, at the end of the day, they're all salesmen/women and earn their living selling you something. They'd have a hard time 'proving' anything anyway, most of the time they're just talking bollocks.

Honestly, if you'd ever spent any time with one of them in a pub you'd want to knock them out - they're the sort of people you laugh about with your mates when you see them standing at a bar talking shite to some girl trying to pull her. I'm not exaggerating here - that's what they're like. Watching them talk to each other is the most hilarious thing - it reminds me of woodlice crawling over each other to get out of a flowerpot.

I once had to sit in a recruitment office because the job I was interviewing for took place on their premises - it was like every cliche from every comedy sketch you've ever seen about salespeople was in place. Loud voices, brash, arrogant mannerisms, calling everyone 'buddy' on the phone in fake American accents, a couple of them even wore braces (suspenders for our American members). Truly pathetic.