To be fed up with recruitment agencies

[QueryQuery]

I'm sure that they have their uses, but the following is infuriating:

• listing jobs that have been filled - often weeks ago.

• not getting back to you, especially following an interview when it would be quite nice to know for certain that you've been unsuccessful

• getting pissed off when you ring to ask about jobs that have been filled - don't put them on your fucking website as 'new' roles then.

Last time I was job hunting was just after the economy tanked, but it was so much more straightforward. What's happened in the last few years? Why are there so many more hoops to jump through? And when did 9 til 5 creep up to 8:30 to 5:30? (No objection to long hours, I was just surprised.)

I was always told that you had to chase agencies to keep you fresh in their mind. I presume, having called a couple of times over a couple of weeks, that this is not the case.

How about

-spamming you with inappropriate job adverts
-hiding, or omitting the unsubscribe button
-ignoring repeated requests to unsubscribe and
-lying when they claim they didn't receive a reply inquiring after a position.

Added to the general lack of competence, makes for a depressing experience.

I work in a technical field - it's laughable speaking to people who clearly haven't a clue what the abbreviations, initials, and terms actually mean.

Yes, depressing. I avoid now. I got fed up with giving them cv's and loads of info and time for interviews just to keep their "candidate pool" up when there was not ever a chance of a job.

they are on par to estate agents, dishonest anything to get a fee

calling for the first time 3 years after my husband has started work in a job he found for himself, then bitching at me because he didn't contact them to tell them (if they'd been any good surely they'd have made contact before now???)

Mixed feelings on this. They are mostly useless in my considerable experience, but I did come across one who really worked hard to negotiate me into a job I really wanted.

I have some great war stories of the hopeless ones - including but not limited to the one who tried to casually mention in passing just prior to a phone interview that the salary on offer would actually be 10k less than mentioned in all previous discussions. He was even surprised and offended when he contacted me a year or so later about another job and I refused to deal with him and told him why.

Btw it's theoretically illegal to advertise jobs that don't exist - that works well (not). I suspect those "filled" posts never existed

YANBU. They would say anything to make a quick £££. I don't trust any of them, and where possible would always go direct.

It's hard to go direct now as companies use agencies and you need to go through them to contact employers. If there is role available suddenly you are wonderful they are in contact all the time then drop you like a hot stone.

Whilst it's nice to be told I am nbu, I would rather my experience was just a blip. With all five agencies. Both local and national.

Also, I am pissed off with them pigeonholing me. Previous role was fairly niche. No other roles locally. I'm more than happy to move into a similar role, but no, they can only recruit for exactly the same role even though same experience is required for both.

Don't use them. Just don't. It's highly likely that the vacancies they send you for will have been advertised elsewhere not via an agency. If you do your research properly then you will find them yourself without the agency. And you're more likely to get the job as it won't involve a fee.

Oh, and often that's why jobs appear to have been 'filled'. They knock off job adverts and send through lots of speculative candidates, but the employer doesn't want to use an agency anyway so all those candidates have just had their time wasted and never stood a chance via an agency.

Where possible I've tried to guess the company, but they don't give much away in their ads.

I tend to do a Google search for some of the terms in the advert, they usually lift them wholesale from somewhere else.

I get really fed up of them calling to see if I have been for any interviews, I know they are fishing to try to poach some business from someone else and I have just started telling them that I am far too busy to talk right now and then blocking their number where possible.

The 'best' one was the agency that contacted me about a job opportunity ....that I had just placed with them that morning! Bizarre.