SableIndustries

Once again, due to being a contractor, I’ve had to become involved in what is possibly the worst part of my job – looking for a new contract. Now, don’t get me wrong here, I love what I do, and wouldn’t change it for the world, and, when it comes to looking at new possibilities, I actually get what could probably be classed as unreasonably excited about the opportunity and potential of what I can do for a company. However, there’s one not-so very small thing that stands between me and those opportunities; the recruitment agencies.

For those of you unfamiliar with the process, for one reason or another, let me give you a basic run-down of how it works. A contractor like myself, or anyone who works permanently and is looking for their next role, will usually put their CV up online, on sites such as Guardian Jobs, Monster, or the much used portal Jobsite, and then use those sites to search for jobs which are pertinent to them. If, like me, you work in a field which is tech-savvy, and such things are expected of you, you might even use social media sites such as LinkedIn, put a gallery of work up on Behance, or even set up your own portfolio site, which will increase your profile visibility, and get you more easily found by those who you’re looking to employ you. After all, nothing quite impresses more than coming top of the rankings on Google when people search for relevant search terms. Once you’ve done all that, the candidate will apply to roles, send out CVs, and hope the phone rings soon.

Now chances are here that, unless you’re lucky enough to be contacted directly by the company you’ve applied to, it’s more than likely that the company will have employed a recruitment company to sift through all the CVs and search out the ideal candidates for the role. I can appreciate this, as searching for the right candidates for a role you’re offering is a full time job on its own, and many people have enough to do in their everyday jobs without having to do this as well. It makes sense, in regards to finances and time, to employ someone to do the job for you.

This is however where things, more often than not in my own experience, don’t go so well. It seems that many of the recruiters seem to approach the whole thing with an appalling sense of laissez faire that seems to verge on the downright apathetic. To illustrate, let me run-down some of the worst crimes I’ve witnessed:

• Little or no knowledge of subject matter: I know that some of the things I deal with can be somewhat technical, but I’ve been on the phone to recruiters numerous times when their lack of knowledge on a given subject matter isn’t just obvious, it’s practically comedic. I clearly state to people on my CV that I’m a digital designer and front end developer, and have been asked by recruiters if I know Oracle, Java, or in one case, Fortran., all of which are back-end technologies. I’ve even witnessed recruiters who don’t know the difference between Java and JavaScript.
• A clear lack of interest in what they’re doing:  There have been times when, on the phone to a recruiter, I’ve been answering a questions they’ve asked me, and received a litany of “yup”, “mmhmm” and “uh-huh”, that I’ve even been tempted to veer off into complete nonsense, just to see if they’re paying attention. I understand this is you job, and you probably hate it, but hey, if that’s the case, why not find a new one – after all, isn’t that what you do for people every day? If you’re not interested in what you’re doing, and it’s impairing your ability to work professionally, then change it. Otherwise, it just makes us candidates feel rather useless, and is deeply discouraging when you’re trying to promote yourself to someone. It also shows when you have no idea of what you’re talking about, as detailed in the point above.
• A lack of attention to detail and professionalism: As with the points above, this really give the impression that recruiters don’t care about the people they’re dealing with. At one point, I even travelled to an interview with a company on the Isle of Wight, only to find that I was entirely unsuitable for the role, because the recruiter had neglected to mention the fact that they were looking for commerce programmers, and not commerce designers, and, only an hour before writing this, I had a recruiter leave a message on my answer phone, leaving a number to call her back at, but no name whatsoever, so when I called back, they couldn’t pass me on to right person, because they had no idea who wanted to deal with me. Yesterday, I was on the phone to a recruiter, and all of a sudden a loud noise came through the speaker. He had to apologise, as apparently a loud klaxon goes off in the office every time someone makes a placement. What is this, Boiler Room? The list could go on and on, I’m sure you get the idea.

The frustration here is that, while in some cases, there are jobs on offer where you can apply directly to the employer, a much larger proportion of job opportunities mean you have to deal with a recruiter in order to just get through to the employer in the first place, and they’re standing in your way like Cerberus, with the three heads of incompetence, disaffection and ignorance, between you and your chance to prove you abilities to get the job you want.

I entirely understand that there will be those who read this who are in the recruitment field, and are perfectly competent at what they do, to whom I apologise if I’ve offended, but this post is written entirely from the majority of my own experience, and, because of that, I think it’s entirely valid for me to say that there are more bad examples in the recruitment field than good ones. To those of you who have read this far, and believe they fall in the category of good recruiters, I suggest you prove me wrong – drop me an email, tell me about those opportunities you have that will suit my skill sets, and show me just how you can make finding a new placement easier. Go on, prove me wrong, I’d love to hear from you.