To ask you why recruitment agencies are desperate to have people on their books?

[Marble179]

I mean I understand that a lot of people in their books gives them more chance of filling roles but why does it seem they go out of their way to pull people in with fake job adverts? I applied for a job last week which is very rare in my field and was contacted immediately by a recruiter for that job who then said the employer is 'looking to get in touch with someone they have used in the last rather than use the agency's, yet the advert remained up. 2 days afterwards, another role the same but supposedly at a different place went up. It seems like made up roles of rare jobs, so why go to all that effort? Or are my suspicions wrong?

Ah typos sorry! Must add that despite the role suddenly being unavailable, as usual to my contact with agencies it was "a brilliant time to join them as they have X, Y, Z exclusive contract being finalised'.

Recruitment agency staff have targets on how many people they have to pull in per month. Also if they have you on their books then they will call you every few months with jobs that you ‘might’ be likely to take or ones which are in a similar field.

That explains it then! They have people targets! See if I was running a recruitment agency I'd limit how many people I have on and try to help those to get a role before taking on new, then that gives the agency some real value!

I think you are confusing service use and commodity. If a service is free, you are the product. Recruiters are paid by clients. They don't 'have people on their books' - they just have your name and details on a database. That helps them to win clients with jobs to be filled.

They also use people for info gathering. When they register you they find out info about not only you as a candidate but also the companies you worked for (and their potential clients/future clients!)
As thisreallyisafarce said they don’t work for the candidate they work for the client - the more people registered on the database the more likely they can fill a role quickly and easily

This is bad practice from the agency if they are indeed posting jobs that don’t exist.

Where agencies add value is having a strong network and being able to access it quickly. So numbers of potential candidates in a database is useful but what is more useful is that those candidates actually want to work with the agency. If candidates feel duped by the agency they are unlikely to respond when a real role does come up.

That helps them to win clients with jobs to be filled.

Exactly. Employers who need 50 temporary/stc workers will more likely use the agency with 1000's people supposedly available and looking for work than the agency that have a smaller pool of available people.

@Marble179 Your business model wouldn’t work and you wouldn’t make it past the first year.

You work for your clients to fill roles that is how you get paid. You need to have as many candidates as possible.

You can sometimes reverse the process if you have an outstanding candidate however this would never form all your billings.

Yes, I agree that duping people is bad business. Many agencies do seem to get away it, however.

Are you definitely qualified/suitable for the job? It could be a nice way of them saying thanks but no thanks - I worked somewhere like this very briefly, always making excuses m/reasons about the job instead of giving proper feedback.

my sister worked in recruitment years ago, she explained to me years ago that there are possibly three positions for them to fill ,so three lots of revenue for every one candidate, firstly you contact them and you are possibly in a job, you leave for new position and your current job needs to be filed, then there is the new position ( this might not actually exist but you send your cv gives them an excuse to contact major companies say we have x candidate , so when they need someone they got in early, or they are the person they know and call- they cant do this unless they have a genuine candidate to put forward in case employed says yes we need x) and of course you could be filling a position for someone else who's moving on- have to find them a new place. So the more people they have the more work potentials , so yes they do make up fake adds particularly in the higher salary ranges or more specialised industries to get people to contact them so they can have an idea of who's likely to move.

There is no exclusivity, you want a job , you're not going to commit to only using a particular agency unless its temp positions, employers want people usually straight away, not going to wait for them to build up a book of suitable candidates, high turnover means always be wary of jobs posted by agencies. but they also usually work on clearing the last received cv on their desk first as no point contacting people in touch 6 months ago as you've probably moved by now, if you were looking for a new job, so while these adds may not be real they will put you forward as soon as a position opens so keep sending in cv.

things may have changed in the industry now but that's how she explained it to me.

DW and I work in highly commoditised fields, where the only criterion is the qualification. The temp jobs are on a day to day basis, so we get a lot of cretinous offers. DW has just been offered one with a 200 mile commute, on the grounds that Birmingham and Newcastle are in the North of England.

Yes as PP have said they have targets, at a lot of agencies the consultants need to prove to bosses they are bringing in a certain amount of candidates a week/month, some lesser agencies don’t even really care how qualified or competent these new people are, it’s just a numbers game.

When I was unemployed I was getting a lot of calls from recruiters who said they’d seen my CV online and had a perfect role for me, or if I applied for one of their roles they’d tell me to come in for a chat. Turned out a lot of the time there was no role, or they weren’t putting me forward if there was, but just wanted me to register for their books. I started asking more info about the ‘role’ to suss out if it was just a registration meeting, as it was costing me money and time out of my temp roles to travel into their offices just to sit and fill out some forms for 30 mins.