There are good Recruitment Agencies

Let me start by saying, the good majority of agencies out there are not trying to shaft you. On the contrary, it's just that the ones who you hear from the most, may not generally be the best. This might seem like a terrible generalisation, but in my experience this is what I have found to be the case. We must remember that the business they are in is not easy.

Let me explain

If an agency is doing well as a small company they will probably try and expand, as any self aware company should. This is not a bad thing. As the company starts to expand so do the overheads, employee pay roll etc. This leads to the company pursuing all avenues of maximum profit in order to offset their increasing costs The previous "ethos/morals" of the company may then start to take a back seat against the financial backdrop they are now being measured against.

What does this mean to the us

First and foremost the company we once thought were our friends no longer know us by name or number. Neither can they find our details on the new corporate system they have spent so much of their hard won fees on. Oh, and lets not forget the CV must be in a particular format (please see HR-XML). In fact in the last several months I have had to send my CV, unchanged, to the same company on numerous occasions. Why should I have to do this? Why can they not store a copy of my CV or at least some details of me somewhere? To be honest I have still not figured this out yet, but I have a few of my own ideas.

As said earlier, a succesful agency is trying to expand, which means that it must lever all possible avenues in order to maximize profits. One of the cheapest ways to do this is to is to introduce commission based work. In a perfect world this is a fantastic idea, but it could be argued that in a perfect world communism doesn't sound too bad either. To understand the implications let's take a more general scenario. I know there are other issues to address, but give me time ;-)

Let's say that the government introduce commision based policing, ie for each arrest they get £20 if it is of a certain class of arrest they get £40 and so on etc etc. In our current political climate, and with crime escalating on our streets, this sounds like a great way to get all those so called "lazy cops" off their asses. But is it? And are they "just lazy"? I dont think so. (NOTE: in our current climate it would also be a great way to become a millionaire)

Ask yourself what would happen if this was put in place. Would the police start to go after murderers to get the big bucks, or would they start hunting for the small fry and accumulate some easy winnings. Either way it would seem that the general public (the job hunter in our case) are going to see an increase in effectiveness.

Oh to be that Naive

It's not that we have lazy police, or that they can't be bothered, it could be that the police have not been given the correct tools to do their job effectively or the correct training. It's a bit like the NHS, we have some of the most competent surgeons,nurses, doctors and medics on this planet, but are they being given what they need?

I hope this gives some impression of what the author of this site thinks the main problems are in the recruitment industry. I do not think it is the individual recruiters fault rather the environement that they are working in. We all need to earn a living and in some cases do not get to choose where we work.