Jon Hume

I have been meaning to write this post for a long while, but following the recent negative press around one of the recruiters that is particularly active in the same space as the business I work for (not mentioning any names CONSOL PARTNERS), I thought now would be a good time to share some of my experiences of using the services of Consol and similar agencies.

But first a recap on the story of the moment, as reported here by The Kernal and discussed some more on The Recruiting Unblog –

Consol allegedly had a candidate that they arranged two interviews for, a couple of days apart. At the interview at the first company (the source for the original article) was informed by the candidate that they had received an offer from elsewhere. After the interview the source informed Consol that they wouldn’t be taking the candidate any further and asked for them to inform her/she so that they could accept their outstanding offer from elsewhere. This is when the foul play occurs – it is alleged that Consol then decided not to tell the candidate in order to provide themselves with a better chance of persuading them to attend their next interview. Long story short – the candidate ends up missing the deadline for their existing offer after a series of false messages were relayed to them telling how the first agency hadn’t provided any meaningful feedback.

This is obviously a terrible example of how working with recruitment agencies can go horribly wrong (for agencies and indeed candidates) but I have to be honest I am not at all surprised. At my place of work we regularly receive in excess of 10 calls in a day from various agencies, often insisting that they are not recruiters and many that lie in order to try and get through to individual members of our staff. There are certain agencies that we have asked not to call us at all based on our previous experience and those of our peers and we try to be open and honest about it and just ask them to mark us not to receive phone calls. One of these agencies actually resorted to sending snail mail to us this week, and have in the past sent embarrassing grovelling emails to various members of our team to try and get us back on side again. I’m still considering if I have the time / energy to return the mail to them and once again request that they don’t take any more of our time!

I completely understand the need for these legitimate businesses to go about their day to day activity, but when a potential customer is so put off by your nauseating sales tactics that they actually ask you to refrain from contacting them again, you really do need to pay attention to that and have some self respect. I understand that the staff turnover in this target driven environment is pretty rapid, but I don’t need to hear about you taking over the patch from the previous employee every 3 months when they inevitably fail to meet their probationary sales targets, and all about how you are better / the best / the best thing since sliced bread – I’m not terrifically interested.

The worst calls we get are generally from the non-specialist agencies – in many cases the callers are either aggressive to staff members who don’t allow them to be put through to decision makers, or so desperate that they decide to pepper our inboxes with unsolicited CVs from candidates that have no idea they are being sent to us – the recruiters are just hoping to strike it lucky. On more than one occasion in the last 12 months highly confidential emails from our competitors have been inadvertently forwarded to me (whenever this has happened I have immediately emailed the person whose privacy has been breached and then deleted the emails – often receiving hilarious yet irate responses directed at the recruiters with myself copied in).

I suppose the point I am rambling towards is that the issue of recruitment agencies and their benefits will always be individual to the agency in question, and to the recruiter as well. As an industry recruitment needs to improve … and fast. With an increased uptake in social media usage for job seeking and the culture for digital agencies to be very accessible, our reliance on recruiters (as an industry) for full time positions is at an all time low. Great candidates contact us direct every week, and we are very happy to hear from them. My own personal exception comes with contractors, particularly designers and developers – and working with recruiters for this type of hire is occasionally (but not always) less stressful and something I have had positive experiences from with a very select group of suppliers.

So, some tips for working with recruiters and getting the most out of the experience:

• Do your research! Ask any recruiter you are thinking of working with for an in-person meeting to discuss your needs and how you want to work with them. Confirm the process for selection and any relevant dates / times for how you want it to run.
• Ask for references from their existing clients – not only for the candidates, but for the recruiter themselves. Any good recruiters will be happy for you to talk to their clients and find out what they think of working with them.
• Make a decision as a business, and stick to it. Do we need the help of recruiters, if you don’t then make it a blanket decision across your team and ensure that everyone knows what to say if you receive prospecting calls. There is no point in wasting everyone’s time.
• Create a preferred supplier list with an expiry date. Work only with the guys who pass your research phase and don’t even entertain input from outside this list. Refresh your list annually or when a recruiter is no longer performing well for your business. Put the PSL in a visible spot in your office (we have ours written up on the whiteboard) and make sure that those who answer the phones regularly know to check the list before putting anyone through. Prepare a little message for those who argue about this and be calm, and efficient when dealing with persistent callers from outside the list.

Recruitment as an industry has a horrific public image (right up there with parking attendants and employees of HMRC), but if you pick a rogue recruiter without performing the same basic due diligence you would perform before working with any new organisation then you only have yourself to blame. The goal of this post isn’t to be sensationalist – or to pile more abuse onto Consol, who I am sure will have had enough of this by now – but rather to provide a public service announcement:

PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

Please note: No recruitment consultants were harmed in the making of this post. The image is merely a terrible stock shot.