...to expect courtesy from recruitment consultants?

[Caplanepourmoi]

(With apologies to any nice recruitment consultants reading this)

I'm a regular but I've name changed.

I'm looking for a job at the moment (just finished a fixed term contract). I'm a chartered accountant. I have 18 years' experience in a number of senior finance roles and I trained with a top firm.

I am having a sodding nightmare trying to find a job.

In my field, the roles are almost all handled by recruitment consultants. I've been intermittently looking for the past couple of years but I've stepped up my game a bit now that I'm not working.

I'm in the north of England, close to two of the biggest cities, and I've indicated that I'll accept up to £25k less than I was earning previously on the grounds that one sometimes has to speculate to accumulate.

If you are a recruitment consultant, or if you've dealt with them, can you rationalise this behaviour (listed below) please?

• I see a role advertised on a website. I call the recruitment consultant. Somebody takes a message, but I don't get a call back. I call again several days later, still no response. It's so rude.

• I see a role advertised, I send in my CV, I have to 'sell myself' over the phone to somebody who knows very little about finance and explain why I'd be the right fit for the role and I hear absolutely nothing.

• I see a role advertised, speak to somebody about it, and they tell me that it's already at interview stage and the client is seeing people that day, even though the closing date is at least a week off. This often happens a week or more after I first call the recruitment consultant and leave a message...why bother calling me back after a week to tell me that other people are already being interviewed but they'll send my cv in, and why bother with closing dates if the recruitment apparently works on a 'first come, first served' basis, which seems insane for senior finance jobs?

• I see a role advertised, talk to a recruitment consultant about it, and he or she promises to call me back before the end of the week to tell me whether they plan to submit my cv, after spending up to half an hour talking through my cv with me. They never call back. The last time this happened, I left it until the middle of the following week then swallowed my pride and called, only to find that the recruitment consultant had gone on holiday. I left a message, but I never heard back.

Yes, I know that recruitment consultants are sales people. Yes, as know that they work for the end client, not the candidates. However, is a little courtesy too much to ask?

Every time this happens to me I feel a little more disillusioned: nobody likes to be treated with contempt, or as if they aren't even worth a returned call or e-mail.

Any insights please?

I am delighted to be a sales person thank you very much, when I compare my salary and take home pay to my peers and indeed the candidates I represented I know who's cheque I'd rather be banking.
It's nothing to do with disillusionment people have to see recruitment for what it and consultants have to be honest with themselves, their clients and their candidates and we will all be better for it. At the moment the chancres and sharks are rewarded and until that stops what can you do ?

I have twice been ignored by the first recruitment company I've contacted regarding a job only to be placed in the role once I've applied to a second agency. These are £400 a day specialist roles so I hardly buy the excuse that they're snowed under with applicants.

Well their loss then, the 2nd lot will be delighted

Yes, but I prefer not to think about what the second recruitment consultant makes per day on my employment just from forwarding my cv to the company!

No no no no
They don't get paid for forwarding the CV they get paid for the hours of relentless work they did to win the account in the first place, to negotiate your terms including what you paid and ensure you keep your contract. If it's so easy have a go at networking and find your own job next time, I suspect you'll not enjoy it as much as you think.

new from having read through your posts you seem to be a headhunter rather than recruitment - maybe the 2 roles are combined now?

I just don't like the whole dragging me somewhere with passport (another forum moneysavingexpert had a post on this) and I'm never sure if they do this to get figures or if there's a job there. So I stopped schlepping out of my way unless there was a job!

There are great consultants and bad apples but I think if you go after it sales like all the time (I speak to estate agents and sales people every day at work) and aggressive you'll put people off. You have to realise you're dealing with people and build relationships.

The two roles overlap.
You cannot "burn" anyone and have a career in a specialised area so this are the consultants I'd recommend dealing with, stay away from the addecos, the hays, the Robert Walters. Those organisations have some idiot stood over the consultants asking how many CVs they've sent out that day - not how many long term relationships have you built that will pay off in 6-12 months time. So avoid or see them for what they are an expect absolutely nothing.
If you find a boutique company or individual .... Look on LinkedIn for those, they will proactively find you the role that you actually want

NewBrummie - when I compare my salary and take home pay to my peers and indeed the candidates I represented I know who's cheque I'd rather be banking.

Thank you for confirming something I had long suspected about agencies. Basically, talking up a job to a candidate they themselves would not touch with a long pole. They consider themselves to be far to good, you see, far to clever.

Wouldn't want anything to interfere with the employment agency no marks chatting, drinking cappuccinos, listening to the radio at full volume and flicking through, 'Hello' magazine.

I'm glad other people have much the same opinion of employment agencies. However, they are nothing more than a necessary evil. A means to an end. You know, like pest control or a plumber to clear a blocked toilet.

When the same job is advertised with 8 different agencies how is a recruitment agent 'winning' the account. The candidate wins the role, irrespective or which agency they are with. If candidates from one agency are getting preferential treatment I suspect that's because of something that's not necessarily in the best interests of the job hunter.

Brummie can you please tell me why salaries are never included in job adverts anymore?

Is it just to make more overqualified people apply so you can get better people onto your books? Do the jobs even exist?

Telling the OP that consultants are bound to behave crap is 'bound to upset her'?? They're analogous with Estate Agents - assume they're crap and they're easier to handle. Expecting better is generally unrealistic - that's the ONLY significant point I'm making here. Utterly ridiculous to keep characterising that advice as an attack, particularly when based on extensive experience of dealing with such people.

If you want a whole thread of 'yes you're right' then don't ask the damn question.

I got a job through a recruitment agency. I was moving to a new area to move in with my partner. On getting the job I rented a house in the new area (we only had my wage coming in at the time).

The job ended up being one where the company could shift me to the other end of the country at a moments notice and expected to fund my own housing in new area. This was never explained to me and the contract was worded in such a way that unless you were expecting it, it didnt stand out.

I cannot believe the recruitment consultant didnt know this. It was a fundamental part of the role. It sparked 18 months of hell. I had to move away as I had signed a contract for my house and was totally away from my support network. I suffered a mental breakdown.

I hate the recruitment consultant and the company equally for this.

So don't use agencies then or indeed plumbers when your toilet is broken, do it yourself and do a better job, I'm sure you can ??
Salaries I don't know why they wouldn't advertise those, the last thing in the world I would want is over qualified or under applying that won't make me any money. But then I think strategically and long term which as I've said before the big players on the high street don't so maybe they do want hundreds of CV's clogging up their database making it hard to access the right ones who knows I'm not representing the recruitment industry as a whole, I don't even do the job any more just trying to offer some insight.

So MissPhonic you didn't read your contract and that's somebody else's fault. Ok then.

I promise you Newbrummie, I read it. It was worded very sneakily and I read it ans applied it to the role I had been told by the recruitment consultant I was applying for.

I had friends doing the job for other companies who read it and said it wouldn't have rung alarm bells for them.

And thank you for the sympathy Newbrummie. Sounds like recruitment was the perfect role for you.

I'm a headhunter. We don't advertise the roles we work on, it is all done via networking and direct approach.

OP feel free to PM me if you'd like a list of financial services headhunters to contact. If you're an accountant with over 15 years' experience you may find the roles you're looking at are just not properly covered by the agencies.

My DH was talking about this the other day. At the start of his career he was treated as dispensible "CV fodder" by agencies. More recently he has got onto the radar of the high-end headhunters and is treated like a God. Chalk and cheese.

Sorry no sympathy at all you signed a contract ... There's no such thing as sneaky writing it's either there of it isn't.

Obviously I wouldn't wish a net course breakdown on anybody but surely you'd just leave before it came to that ?
Certainly not blame other people retrospectively

I'm in IT and I've come across some real charmers - I'm in Australia but a large percentage of recruitment consultants here are from the UK.

There are some good ones - some really good ones, and they take time to find. I'm busily building relationships with the good ones, both for my career and to help recruit for my team. The good ones are humans even when you aren't influential - obviously when you start holding a budget to recruit they are all your best friend.

The bad ones - sadly you often have to be burned before you know who they are.

It is a salutary lesson though, as another poster pointed out (actually I think it was the OP) - they are treating people appallingly, and these are the very people who get management positions and then are able to recruit. I have a very long list of agencies I won't touch now I'm recruiting - it's payback time.

The people (agencies) who treated me with respect, kept in contact and built a relationship with me - regardless of my influence, are the ones I will use.

Good for you and I hope you hold true to that no matter what, as I said before rewarding the arseholes is pretty frustrating to watch time and time again.

If you want to go back into practice, take the bull by the horns and call the firm and ask to speak to the partner of the department where you want to work and if you can send them your CV. They LOVE not paying recruitment fees. I did this and got in the Big 4 that way. Also most accountancy firms have vacancy sections on their websites to bypass the middleman and plenty of jobs go on career websites directly.

I have to say I know a few recruitment consultants (independently) and lets say they play their cards close to their chests.

I do think that a lot are sneaky when it comes as in MissPhonics case getting someone to sign something they're not sure of... ok you should ideally read through the contract but what if it's worded in such a way you would not know?

I've had agencies keep me on for being a good little temp and then hiding the best jobs from me or using me to get into a company where they wanted a foothold (I was in early 20s), that's bad practice - was with Blue Arrow. Now I wouldn't countenance that behavior so much and would speak up if after a while I felt I was being messed around.

Youre in a way I'm relieved but not that word really - that the same is the case in Australia and that the vast majority of the high street agencies are, sorry to say, scum. The smaller ones I agree are better but sometimes they too can muck you around. It's best to find a small agency or larger agency who seem good and ethical and then build relationships then. It does also depend, do you want them as a contractor, perm jobs, temp etc...

I wouldn't also rule out Linkedin either - I was found there recently by another company the construction people for Battersea Power Station and a job was going there - it was only the long days - 8-6 I think that put me off - if I were 10 years or more younger I'd have thought about it, and I think the woman doing my job was a bit burned out by it all too. So you can be headhunted but you need to be spot on in what you can/cannot do and what you will/won't do. I was told recently that I interview very well and am super confident and I'm sure this is through my time with agencies and weeding out right/wrong jobs for me. I was subsequently told by a small boutique agency that when I'd interviewed for Clifford Chance (magic circle law firm) a few years ago that they generally prefer to train up their staff and also the established PAs there (my age 40s upwards) tend not to leave and can be a bit complacent re their jobs but need people below them to do the donkey work. so generally not worth me interviewing there. But me being new to legal world would not have known the inside info on the firms which is what the agency should've told me - their staff were off sick/holiday when I went for the CC job!

anyway rant over!

OP I hope you have enough info or what we've told you boosts you a bit - good luck!

Ladies, you are the greatest. Thanks for all your input.