Recruitment Agencies Rant

Typedef

Some things that really bug me about recruitment agencies.

1.
Example.
http://www.irishjobs.ie/iol/new/job_new.asp?id=297461&JMID=799&keywords=C%2B%2B

The word Kernel is not spelled correctly. So if the recruitment type droid at the other end of application (x) doesn't even know enough about the job they are advertising to spell it title properly, how can said droid ever make a good decision on which applications to follow up on.

2.

By and large most recruitment agencies never mail back. Companies on the other hand mail back by an order of magnitude in comparison to recruitment agencies.

3.

Again this is sort of like point 1. Some recruitment droid will stick into a job advertisement something like "Must have industry experience of Object Oriented Programming", and I sort of laugh, I mean seriously what does someone who has never even compiled Hello World in C know someone with 'Industry experience' of OOP from a hole in the ground?

4.

Ok not all of the recruitment types are that bad, but in my experience, the good ones are the rare exceptions, not the rule.

Feel free to rain tirade from a great height
</Rant>

Greenbean

The person in the recruitment agency doesn't have to be qualified in computers to relay on the requirements which the computer firm gave them. It does help, though, that they be literate and competent. Its even better if they have some sort of notion of what computers are about, but far from necessary. What they really want to see is if you can convince them you meet the requirements; and hey, if you lie to them, then you are most likely prepared to lie to the recruiters at the company. If they are a crap agency they won't care if you meet the requirements and just send you on regardless, wasting everyone's time.

Main message: The requirements are set by the company hiring, not the agency. The agency is just a middle man with, in this case, some crap people working for them (Bad sign of their recruiting skills), who are supposed to be good at finding prospective people for the job. Since the IT industry is on a downer with less jobs, alot of agencies no longer have a "computer specialist" and just have someone who does several fields.

WhiteWashMan

i hate estate agents even more....

however, a good recruitment agent is far too few and far too far between.
if you find one let us know.

on the other hand, i can list with great authority how mad many of them are.
the worst is when you go to a job interview and your cv has been changed or doctored and says you are fluent in swahili, can fly a boing 747 and can calculate the acceleration of a feather in a gravity tank and have been in the army for 4 years.
its embaressing saying to your interviewer, im sorry, i dont know that and to be honest, i didnt put it on my cv. i had that a few time last year. and i gave the agent a bollocking and told them not to contact me again.

but, times are tough for them,a nd as times get tougher, only the very good or truely inventive ones will be in a job. the crap ones will dissappear.
thank god. seems recession has one good point.

ando

yeah, I've also got a little wary of recruitment agencies. My CV was passed on for a job which I was obviously not qualified for. I went for the interview being unaware of them being fully UNIX server based. (I'm a Mcse2000)

The 'IT' recruitment agency either did'nt know the difference between NT and Unix, or they were desperate to get someone into the interview room.... What a waste of a day that was

Evil Phil

A recruitment agency who shall remain nameless (it was Grafton Recruitment) sent me for a job several years ago - way back when I was a tester who only knew HTML. The job was for a C++ programmer working on a project to run on communication statelites. I know that sounds far fetched but it true. Jesus, it was the most embarressing interview of my life. The poor bloke who was running the intvw was just as embarresed as I was.

Apperently the statelites in question were going to transmit internet boardcasts or something. HTML = Internet so I ended up in the interview. Sheez.

eth0_

I think the worst recruitment agency by FAR is 1-800 people. Anyone else had bad experiences with them?

Lemming

If I never have to use a recruitment agency again for the rest of my life .. I will die a happy man.

When I was in 4th year in college, I sent around cv's left right and centre. I was fortunate enough to have gotten IT experience through all the summers of college. Mostly in sys admin, some in games testing, etc.

ANd I'd put the fact that I had relevant experience for whatever job it was I was applying for.

This one case stands out:

Sys.Admin job. I get (a rare) reply from the agency involved with a "I'm sorry, you don't have experience"

And I'm thinking "wtf?? Which part of 'I have hands-on experience' did you not understand?".

I have only ever had ONE positive experience with an agency. I was applying for a C++ (junior) position and the guy on the other end of th ephone was decent enough to say "Look, you're wasting your time to be honest with agencies. Most don't want to know until you have at _least_ 6 months continuous experience".

Shower of parasites most of them are and we'll be better off without them.

Venom

1-800 people were grand for me. Took them 3 days to get me a job in the feild I wanted. They were very cool and very helpfull.

I told them what I wanted and explained If they sent me on 1 interview that wasnt in the profession I was looking into I would be off to a different agency so fast there heads would spin.

gandalf

One thing about recruitment agents is check them out before you fire your CV off to them.

I made the mistake in the past of firing my CV to a load of them and most were unprofessional muppets. The last time I moved I checked around with people I knew who had just changed jobs got the names of 3/4 agencies they recommended and limited myself to them. I also kept them in the picture of what interviews I was going for etc and there were no overlaps and no bull**** from them.

Gandalf.

Beruthiel

well, I work in the printing trade and APB Recruitment got me my last three jobs, I found them great as they didn't contact me until the job I was looking for came up.

dazberry

I've never taken a job via an agencies, but have had a ton of experience with them, and they suck.

I've had dealings with them since around 94, and most are rubbish, but I've never had so much trouble with then than I've had for the first 7 months of this year (found myself in early retirement<g>).

What people tend to forget is that recruitment is really a form of sales, and some sales people would sell their grandmothers if there was a few yoyos in it.

I'd love to name names, but I'd probably get into trouble for it, but I've had two major run-ins, one was for sending out my CV without asking me (oh they got an ass kicking - and "prospective employer" after a phone call from me refused to deal with them again), the second just told lies (ok, most all tell lies, but I was particularily erked by their blatant lies).

D.

sceptre

I used work for an accountancy practice in Limerick that had a recruitment division attached - abiut 10-15 people working in the recruitment part.

Mixed bag really as I watched what they were at. As the techy person in the building(s) I obviously had quite a few dealings with the recruitment part. A few of them were highly competent, consulting with people at every stage and not overstating qualifications (these people I would certainly deal with). A few were of the "errra sure, it's kind of your field" type.

Probably part of the "you must achieve, place and earn" philosophy in most recruitment agencies. For example, I'm reliaby informed another well-known agency whose name began with M (and ended with "borough") used have a kind of circle of shame every Friday where people were expected to reveal their failings in the previous week and state their targets for the coming week to the group as a whole.

eth0_

Well I just had another exciting agency experience! Had an interview with one at 5.30, was 5 mins late due to traffic, got there, office locked and not a sign of anyone. There was another guy there who'd been there since 5.20 for an interview with them about another job too. They told me they were open till 6.30 and myself and this other guy were dealing with two different people there so surely they can't have both got it wrong!

It's incompetence like this that pisses me off big time about agencies! I'll be on the phone to them first thing tomorrow that's fer sure

Borzoi

The same agency got me my current job as got me my first one! Every other agency has sucked.

Now I find myself looking to move on again, I've emailed CVs to four agencies, two Dublin, two London. One was back on to me within 20mins, with some possibilities, the second sent an auto reply email, and I've heard nothing from the other two.

given that I'm in an industry that is crying out for staff, and I'm highly qualified and experinced, I'm a little non-plussed by the agencies attitude.

Then I remember: It's because they're twats.

p2p

Hi there,

Can anyone recomend an agency / company
that would be good to contact from a graduate
point of view ?

I have just graduated with a degree in
computer science and am finding the whole
thing very slow indeed. Everyone wants experience !!

Thing is , i dont want to work in some s-hitty
call center job , its not exactly gonna help with the
whole experience thing is it !

OttoVonBis

>Can anyone recomend an agency / company
>that would be good to contact from a graduate
>point of view ?

All the regular agencies should do the job. Do some research as there are a lot of Muppets in any field and Recruitment Consultants have their fair share, think of them as salespersons.
If somone seems to be a Muppet then chances are they are, gut instinct should mention it to you.

>Thing is , i dont want to work in some s-hitty
>call center job , its not exactly gonna help with the
>whole experience thing is it !

Dude you have to start somewhere. Nothing wrong with ****ty call center jobs if you are using it to get some computer related experience on your Resume. The truth is that most companies run a mile from graduates who are wet behind the ears in the world of being a corporate drone they are however much more favourable if you have worked in a corporate environment before and know the diffenence between a PO and an SLA. Any experience where you use a computer to do your job is good IMO.

If you have any personal contacts that can get you in doing what you wanna do then I recommend calling in favours!! If not......

Hope this helps clarify a bit.

SantaHoe

Having only read the first post of this thread, I raise three cheers for typedef.
Absolutely spot on, I also find it aggravating having some muppet scrutinize my CV and bin it because it doesn't match his little keyword search.
I have to laugh when I hear of the apparent 'IT skills shortage' in this country... well now we know why, it's because we have an army of chimps at the recruitment helm.
I've thrown my hat at agencies... they're not worth a crap unless you actually go in and sit down with someone.

Kali

Over the past month and a half i've been actively looking for a new full-time job.. sent at least 20-25 mails off.. got one reply (that was to a company not an agency).

If theres one thing I can offer its to phone them.
Don't bother mailing your cv or applying on-line from one of the jobs websites... its a waste of time and you won't get a reply.
They'll run through the job with you over the phone and if they are interested in you then send them your cv via mail with "regarding our telephone conversation".. and the job reference.

Kali

Originally posted by p2p
Thing is , i dont want to work in some s-hitty
call center job , its not exactly gonna help with the
whole experience thing is it !

Well first figure out what area you want to get into..

Nothing wrong with a call centre or technical support position for someone trying to get into the network administration side of things... depending on the exact type of support you can learn a lot in a short time (plus you can always get them to pay for a few MCPs or the like if you so wish..)

Equally a lot of programmers may start off doing ****ty software testing..

If you want to travel there are plenty of places available overseas (contact FAS for details) in rather good positions (i.e. not testing or support)..

BuffyBot

Originally posted by p2p
Everyone wants experience !!

Thing is , i dont want to work in some s-hitty
call center job , its not exactly gonna help with the
whole experience thing is it !

Ermm yes it is - not with technical stuff, but it shows you can deal with people (honest to God you'ld be surprised at the amount of techy people I've worked with who had the social skills of a prune), both collegues and customers. It also shows you can work in a high pressure environment, meet targets etc etc - which are what people look for, not just tech skills.

SantaHoe

Originally posted by Kali
depending on the exact type of support you can learn a lot in a short time (plus you can always get them to pay for a few MCPs or the like if you so wish..)

Yep, absolutely... it's definitly a learning experience, but only to a point, I suppose it depends on how much you know already. (there again, the more you know - the more you know you don't know)
It's worth working in a call center for a few months, just to have done it... at least you'll have some funny stories to tell if nothing else.

<edit>
Oh and the place I did tech support in would let you study for your MCP/MCSE's during working hours, while the other saps are on the phones
Getting paid to study for MCP... sweet... certainly a damn sight cheaper than going to a college to do it.

Typedef

More of the same clueless recruitment types, oh god, it gets under my skin.

http://www.irishjobs.ie/job_new.asp?id=310798&JMID=129&%20%20keywords=2+Years

Notice how the first offical 'release' of .NET is less than three monts old, thus it is actually 'impossible' to have four years experience of .NET programming.

Grr.... that annoys the s*it out of me.

BuffyBot

Originally posted by Typedef
More of the same clueless recruitment types, oh god, it gets under my skin.

http://www.irishjobs.ie/job_new.asp?id=310798&JMID=129&%20%20keywords=2+Years

Notice how the first offical 'release' of .NET is less than three monts old, thus it is actually 'impossible' to have four years experience of .NET programming.

Grr.... that annoys the s*it out of me.

Am I missing something? I couldn't see any mention of 4 years .NET experience...

The right candidate will have 3 years commercial experience
of SQL and web services with a min. of 10 months experience of working with C#, VB.Net and ASP.Net.

ZeFrog

Hi lads,

I am looking for a job and I have a bit of an apprehension contacting agencies. But I don't see what other choices I have.

Would anyone recommend a few agencies that are not too bad ( IT area ) ?

How about CPL ?

It s probably not a good period to look for a job but I suppose the sooner you are registered in an agency the better it is.

corley

Hi,

As someone who managed the Dublin office of a software
development company I've had a lot of (mainly bad)
experience with agencies. Believe me, employers are as
annoyed with their incompetence as candidates are but
when there was a boom on it was unfortunately one
of the only ways to get people because candidates weren't
even bothering to check companies' web-sites to see
if they were recruiting.

What follows is probably
only relevant for people looking for software development
jobs - as I don't have experience of other sectors:

The one thing I would say to people looking for work is
that in the current downturn agencies are not as important
a recruitment option for companies as they were. That's
because companies know that there are plenty of
candidates out there and rather than pay some monkey
in an agency 15-20% of your starting salary to get you
it's now probably easier to recruit by word-of-mouth/contacts,
web-site adverts or in classified adverts in Friday's Irish Times.

That 15-20% of your starting salary is also an important
reason for you to by-pass agencies. When I was recruiting
I was always conscious that I'd be a tougher bargainer
(salary-wise) with someone who came in through an
agency because of it. That's because if you came in through
an agency and were looking for, say, 30K that would actually
cost the company 36K in your first year (and given how
people moved around so much you might have moved on
within 18 months). Whereas I could give someone who
came to me directly a salary of over 30K and still be ahead
of a candidate who came through an agency.

One other final word about agencies: If you do get an
interview with a company through an agency and you
feel it went well make sure to remember the name of
the person who interviewed you. I have heard of agencies
telling candidates that they were unsuccessful at interview
because the same company would also have been favourable
about another candidate the agency had who they'd
had trouble placing. One friend of mine actually rang the
person who interviewed them when the agency told them
they had been unsuccessful. The interviewer was surprised
to hear from her because the agency had told him that she
had decided she wouldn't take the job.

Anyway, hope the above is of use to someone....

ZeFrog

Originally posted by corley

Anyway, hope the above is of use to someone....

Hi,

What you say is very informative and it is also worrying.
If on top of a slow market we have to deal with recruitment agencies the chances to get a job are very little.

I'd prefer myself to deal directly with companies, but they don t seem to advertise a lot on web sites such as www.irishjobs.ie

Also HR are a bit like agencies, they work on keywords match, but they don't necessarely know what they deal with. ( they won't know that a PHP programmer will adapt himself quickly if he s asked to work in perl for instance).

In my opinion the best way to get an interview is to know key people within the company that can advertise your cv.

I have the feeling I'm starting a long quest

corley

What you're saying is true. The best way to get a job is
to have a direct contact into a firm that's recruiting. There's
a book on job-hunting and career-changing called
"What Colour is Your Parachute?".

It has a very interesting section which shows that they ways
that people looking for a job prefer to conduct their job search
(typically responding to adverts and recruitment agencies)
are the exact opposite of the way that most companies
like to recruit. (In their opinion - and admittedly it's an
American book so it's not necessarily entirely true here -
the two most preferred ways for filling a position from
the employer perspective are internal recruitment and
personal recommendation from another employee.)

Anyway good luck with the job hunt. As far as I can see
companies are recruiting out there but having experience
is now much more important than it was 12-18 months ago.

As regards web-sites for recruitment I know of one company
which regularly uses www.monster.ie and is quite happy
with it. So, it may just be a case of keeping an eye on all
the different Irish recruitment web-sites as well as checking
the web-sites of particular companies.

ZeFrog

Originally posted by corley

Anyway good luck with the job hunt.

Thanks

Originally posted by corley

As far as I can see
companies are recruiting out there but having experience
is now much more important than it was 12-18 months ago.

Yes I ve noticed that on each add they ask for 2 years of exp on average. Even if the salary is not really good.

Guess who's in big trouble

In fact I was a developer for over 3 years in a company, but we used a proprietary language. Of course I kept myself training and reading a lot of books. I even took the 'opportunity' to be redundant to pass a Java certification (as I really like Java) and I will take another Java certification (for jsp and servlet).

But I can guess what the reactions will be : ok you have done all that but sorry, you don't have experience.

Well I'm not starting crying yet but the job hunt will be a long quest, and I am not sur I ll like it.