Apologies in advance if this proves to be too long, but having read the thread I could do with letting it out and it may shed some light on some of the previous posts, as well as explain why I find it very difficult to sympathise with recruiters’ whinges.
I graduated into the dotcom recession with a first in Economics. I thought I’d landed on my feet, but I was one of those lucky 200 people who had a job offer for M&S’s graduate programme which was then withdrawn in May 1999 after I’d already made financial commitments (car loan etc) on the basis of the offer. My overriding recollection is that while job-hunting was tough, recruiters were at least still professional: almost every application got some sort of response, back in the day when it incurred the cost of a stamp. Where I did meet hiring managers unsuccessfully, I almost always got feedback when I asked. Most of it was really helpful.
I took a job in a call centre (£11k, in 2000) to avoid ending up on the streets and worked my way up through that company via its graduate scheme, which I eventually helped recruit for, to a national business development role. Without wanting to boast, I was good enough in that job to be headhunted by a rival. I got made redundant from that rival in the early stages of the financial crisis, and when looking for jobs then (2007) found standards beginning to slip. Only about half of my applications warranted a response of any description and I even had two face to face final interviews where they didn’t bother to let me know the outcome.
I got a £50k job in the NHS in a role which I loved, and was widely praised for, but which has now disappeared with changing health policy and one of the Coalition restructures. Seeing that the writing was on the wall, a number of years ago I took the plunge and did a full time MBA at a globally-recognised Business School. The course fees alone came to over US$80k, and of course I didn’t work for two years while doing it. I funded it from my life savings.
I’m outlining all this because I can reasonably claim to be well-educated, experienced, literate and numerate, and pretty capable of knowing what I can and cannot do in the workplace.
In the three and a half years since I came back to the UK I have worked for about a year in total. I’ve managed to land two well-paid interim contracts through an agency which I rate very highly, and have done a few smaller ones too on the basis of personal referrals. My experience of job-hunting otherwise has left me distraught, depressed and - on occasion - contemplating suicide.
I’ve made about a thousand applications. About three quarters of those were forced by the job centre or I was desperate for anything and employing a scattergun approach, and while I was capable of doing all of them, put minimal effort into the application. The Universal Jobmatch system the DWP require one to use if you’re claiming JSA didn’t even let one attach a covering letter. It’s hardly surprising I never got a single response to any of them, and hardly surprising that employers get frustrated with Job Centre applications and applicants. That particular system is well and truly fucked and seems designed to create jobs for people to sanction JSA recipients, rather than match employers to talent.
The other 266 jobs I’ve applied for since 2013 (I keep a spreadsheet to track the ones I’m serious about) are also pretty instructive about the UK employment market and the experiences of job-seekers. In all of these, I have met all of the essential criteria in the person spec if it’s available, and I usually meet the bulk of the desirable ones too.
The overwhelming majority of applications just disappear into a black hole. It’s particularly irritating when the advert reappears two months later and says “previous applicants need not apply” when I have no idea if the employer even received it in the first place.
Not getting responses to an application for a job I am eminently suited to is bad enough, but it is now sadly normal not to be told of the outcome even after attending an interview, and even after contacting them to ask. It is also normal for recruiters to not bother holding telephone interviews they’ve arranged, or to bugger candidates about in other ways – constantly rescheduling at the last minute for example. I get that sometimes things come up, but I had one guy rearrange five times in the space of two weeks, before then saying that the position had already been filled!
Recruiters lie. Not all do by any means, but very few seem to add any kind of value. I’ve had the initial rush of excitement followed by radio silence. I’ve had the ones who ignored me, only to start pestering me about my hiring needs when I’ve been in jobs. I’ve had the ones who wanted to know names of people who could verify claims in my CV, only to then go and pester them about their hiring needs. I’ve had the ones claiming to have the hiring manager’s ear, when in reality they’re no better placed than any of the other twenty agents trying to sell a candidate.
One asked me to travel to central London for an interview (over 200 miles, and a phenomenally expensive undertaking at short notice) and his opening gambit – literally the first thing that came out of his mouth after introductions and pleasantries – was: “You don’t have the experience my client is looking for. I knew that anyway from your CV but thought I’d invite you in for a chat anyway.”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Other experiences include the company that wanted a full market analysis for their expansion strategy (yes, of course I’m going to provide two weeks of consulting work for free); the company that interviewed everyone their recruiter longlisted for an opening that never existed simply to pump them for information; the one that approached me directly on Linkedin with all the noises about how I was just what they were looking for, then didn’t longlist me; and the one that didn’t attempt to hide that they had rigged the assessment centre by using real internal documents which gave the internal candidate a huge advantage (he had co-written it, the other two of us were given 20 minutes to read over 70 pages).
My particular favourite, though, was the public sector body which advertised a vacancy with a closing date of the following day. I kid you not. I applied, got an interview, and when I arrived for it the hiring manager expressed surprise and dismay that I’d “sneaked through” – his words. That job went to an internal candidate.
I want to sympathise with businesses that struggle to attract the resources they need, I really do, but there have been times when the recruitment industry has left me totally broken as a result of pure callousness, never mind dysfunction. Like previous posters have said, it can be soul destroying to know what you can offer to people desperate for it, only to be turned away or totally ignored. It is brutal out there.