Recruiters making you go in

[TheMythicalChicken]

So I’m job hunting at the moment. I have applied for a few things and got calls back from recruitment consultants. They all seemed keen and said that I had a good CV and should go in and meet them and register.

So I get dressed up and shlep into town, paying money for travel and wasting a day, to find that the job I applied for isn’t available or they’re looking for different experience, etc.

So why do they get you to go in? It really pisses me off. I just got another call from a recruiter asking me to come in and register. She said they didn’t have anything at the moment but roles come up all the time. My response: “Why the fuck would I waste time and money coming in to see you if you don’t have jobs?”

AIBU?

@Geoff1969 I've only been actively job hunting for around 4 years and its been like this the whole time I've been looking since leaving work to be a sahm.

I'm almost 50, so been around a while. Companies used to advertise in the local paper, you telephoned/wrote to them and you went for an interview taking your references along with you. If they liked you then you got a 2nd interview with the manager who had the final say.

Now everyone is considered to be a dodgy liar with fake suspicious credentials unless a recruitment agency (who the company needing an employee probably has never seen or spoken to in person) has actually spoken to every employer you ever had, even the deceased ones in my case

I recall there being some sort of discussion on tv (70s/80s) saying companies weren't doing enough to recruit the best candidates and they need to consider advertising further afield to encourage foreign applicants. Businesses didn't have the experience to do this so recruitment agencies popped up offering widespread advertising and top notch applicants from the worlds best talents. They offered this service for not much more than an advert in a national newspaper. Businesses used them. But then anyone who had been recruited via an agency thought thats the best way to do it because thats how they were recruited. So it went from there, allowing recruitment agencies to take over what should really be the job of hr.

I wish employers would just advertise their own position

Oh yes. The dominance the agencies have these days in the job market is astonishing. Are the employers really saving money by using agencies? The average percentage finders fee recruiters charge of the chosen employees salary is between 15 and 30% I’ve heard.

I think it is fair enough to comment on the fact that the agents are driven by sales and targets, but it is irrelevant if you are looking for a job in the sense that if a client needs someone and the agency knows you'd be shit hot for the job, they will put you forward, it is as simple as that.

The agencies I used were exclusively for lawyers and so that might make a difference, but they also had the targets and were sales driven. They also headhunted, they tried to headhunt me sometimes, and over the years I formed relationships with them, notwithstanding the targets etc it was based on trust. They gave me really useful free info sometimes. I think that there are decent people everywhere, and it is a matter of finding the decent ones and having good working relationships with them.

I've had something similar happen to me.

A recruiter offered me an interview but didn't specify that it would be with them and not the actual company I'd be working for. I drove half an hour there had to do numerous tests and fill out several forms for the 'job' and then sat in the waiting room and had a chat with the lady who worked for the agency. It wasn't until near the end of the interview she mentioned that she would forward my details on to the employer who would then decide if they wanted to interview me.

I understand that this is the process you might have to go through for some agencies but I feel I should have been told I wasn't interviewing for the actual position before I'd agreed to attend. They definitely did not make that clear and I wasted my time taking time off work and driving through.

All the jobs I've ever had have specified 'strictly no agencies' and won't accept CVs. Mind you that's always been public sector or higher ed.
What sort of jobs recruit via agencies? I've always been intrigued!

That's what recruitment consultants do..Match a job to your credentials. How can they do that if you don't register

Recruitment agencies are the bane of my life at the moment. About 2 yrs ago I was looking for locum agency work. It became clear very quickly that they weren't able to help me because I wanted/needed part time hours. I subsequently got a permanent part time position. Since then - especially recently for some reason - I have had scores of emails/texts/phone calls, sometimes with information about really inappropriate or irrelevant positions that I don't have the right experience or qualifications for. Also from agencies I'm sure I never gave my details to.
I've now taken to replying each time asking to have details removed from their database. But still they keep contacting me! I have then said I will have to complain to the ICO about the use of my data but that doesn't seem to do anything.

Anyway, just a little rant. With GDPR coming in I hope they sort out their marketing/communications/use of data. The silly thing is they annoy me so much that I would never approach those particular ones if I wanted agency work again in future.

@ephemeralfairy anything you can think of!

Care Assistants to CIOs, accountancy, law, finance, education, retail...

I have Hiring managers who ask me whey are aren't advertising in papers @ReinettePompadour makes me do this face.

We have a large in house recruitment team, with the exception of some short notice demands (we need 50 customer service staff by next week for example ) there is no benefit to using an agency, there's nothing we can't do that they can't. If I pass a role to an agency, it's always a last resort.

@chandlersfraud I was just about to bring up GDPR, I hope that it'll be the shake up that the industry needs. It might be a game changer.

I get emails about IT positions, when I can just about work Excel

We'll see!

Ooh legal roles are the bane of my life @mogonfoxnight so hard to fill. Without doubt all the agencies I have used for those have been great and have given me such good market insight that they diddnt need to.

@accidentallyruntowindsor are you in HR in a law firm?

I've done a stint in recruitment and would register all candidates face to face - either in our offices or somewhere near them for lunch/coffee (if they were worth it!)

It's amazing how different some people can be in real life compared to on paper/on the phone. Poor social skills, dressing inappropriately, are they early or late and how do they handle that, are they extremely arrogant or extremely shy? It really does make a difference when matching candidates to a job.

I know it's shitty but you have to remember these agencies are free (to you) - the hiring company is paying. And if that means meeting 30 candidates to make a shortlist of 4, that's what needs doing. So no not everyone gets a job or even an interview, but a good recruiter should know whether it's worth your time to pursue an application with their client.

Skype and phone just aren't the same, and we would always go through the candidates CV with tips and tweaks and generally run through some interview prep questions too, to see how they perform (and give feedback!)

No, I'm a recruiter for a large company.

And among my many other departments I used to recruit for the legal teams as part of my role.

I started refusing to go after wasting so much time/money going to register only to be told the job had already gone.

The only agents to ever get me jobs were the ones that were happy to register me via email and sent my CV straight off.

The best thing to do IME is to tell them you’re short of time/money right now and will be happy to come and register next time you’re in the area or on the day of the interview for the job they’re promising you. They’ve never minded.

Over the years I've met and "gone in" to be interviewed by several agencies. None of them got me a job (in fact one of them kept ringing about full time temp work in a physical industry when I expressly told them I wanted part time permanent admin and completely ignoring me for all the jobs I could actually do...)

I've spoken on the phone to three agencies and had a job offer from each of them.

I understand that anecdotes don't equal evidence, however in my own personal experience my heart sinks when I hear "can you come in and register".

I thought inhouse was quite desirable though so I didn't realise roles were hard to fill. I suppose inhouse lawyers often have a far wider remit in terms of specialisms than ppractice lawyers so that might be why. I have been involved in recruitment only as someone interviewing... or being interviewed. But yes i agree the agents were usually good to deal with!

ignore random "though"!

I think here is an assumption that in house is easier and you are 'just' an admin function for the recruiters out in agencies.

It's bloody hard, especially if you look after more than one area, speaking to legal candidates is very different to speaking to boiler engineer candidates. Lots of hats to change between.

I used a recruitment consultant to get my last job. They were happy to come meet me out of hours near where I lived which was nice. But they rewrote my cv to fit their format and got several massive details wrong- saying I had used a software that I hadn't (I had used a different one and made a point in my cv to say I was confident I'd pick up the more commonly used one because I'd used the less common one and they just said I had used the more common one!) and then they got my last employer wrong- the different employer they wrote was a completely different industry ! It was obviously an accident because they'd left the original duties list that I'd written. It was the equivalent of having a teachers job description with the job title /industry as a lorry driver.

I felt so awkward having to start my interview by stating they'd given false info on my cv. Luckily they had also realised this ahead of time and still wanted to interview me and I got the job.

I would have preferred to go direct but I found it impossible. No one seems to advertise for that anymore, even entry level low paid jobs seem to accept recruitment consultant fees.

I had to go in to see a recruiter yesterday. The meeting barely lasted 5 minutes and I had to hail a taxi to get there as it was in a very remote area. I still can't see why it couldn't have been conducted over the phone. And similar to a previous poster, none of the jobs I had in the last 15 years were ever through a recruiter that I'd met in person. And I don't remember even securing an interview through any of them either. The efficient ones never asked to meet me, just whether they could send out my CV.

It's happened a couple of times when I've gone into register for a permanent role, gone through the whole charade with the consultant and then just at the end they drop in "I'm responsible for temp positions so I'll pass all my notes to "Jane" who will be in touch."

accidental I am sorry, I was only half reading this thread and have realised you had already said you worked for a utilities company. Utilities companies used to have lots of diverse subsidiaries, not sure if that is still the case? And in fact one I am aware of was bought by a French giant! The legal work is therefore probably really interesting, but you'd need someone who is ok to work outside their specialism. I have now read your comment on headhunting too, and it made me laugh. The fact that every lawyer in the dpmt would be told the same thing one after t'other, how great they were, was pretty much a dead give away!

I have always found it far more successful to use LinkedIn and indeed.co.uk to apply for jobs directly with the employer. I don't bother using recruiters.

As for hiring, I refuse to pay the 25-30% fee being charged. For what? If I get a stack of 2000 resumes I can filter through and narrow it down to about 50 in about an hour. From there I can narrow it down to 10 and will interview top 3-4 people. I keep the top 50 resumes for other roles that might come up.