Things You Didn't Know and Were Afraid to Ask (Recruitment Consultancies - Comments & Tips)

Member Name: sdean

Product:	Recruitment Consultancies - Comments & Tips
Date:	16/04/09 (237 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Can help you with interviews

Disadvantages: can be elusive and not call

I worked for an independent recruitment agency for 14 months as an assistant recruiter. This meant I wasn't doing sales calls to companies, but I was doing everything else. This gave me a unique insight into recruitment agencies, agents and procedures. Some which were general practise, some which were unfair, and some downright rude.

I had been to about seven million agencies in my adult life and was disappointed by most. I found independent agencies the best at keeping in touch and sorting out your needs, but maybe not having the most jobs.

Permanent Recruitment
~The Premise~
This is from my own experience and does not reflect the whole of the recruitment Recruitment agents have to bring in a required amount each month, for mid level consultants in the City this was about £10k, with a threshold of £5k (this is what you reach before the consultant takes commission). Each 'placement' would be between 15-25% of the annual salary of the 'placement' so a fee for someone earning £20k was usually £4k. From the monthly target the consultant will take home about 20% of the money they have earned over their threshold. An average consultant will take home £1000 + their basic salary.
The initial sales calls seemed to be quite hard work, but this is where they are trying to get a client, once you please the client, you will generally get repeat business from them - no more selling!

~Candidates~
Candidates usually come from websites, like jobsite, secsinthecity etc and come in the form of an e-mail. Each consultant may be advertising up to 10 jobs, each job may get 100 applications a day. You have no time to be picky. Eventually you learn the art of speed reading and spotting mistakes. If there are a lot of mistakes, or the CV is messy, or the last few jobs were at short intervals, you delete. From that experience, I have made sure my CV is clean, tidy no mistakes and set out to what the job requires.

From these candidates CV's you will decide which ones could be ok for the job and you should, though in my experience it's not done often enough, telescreen. This means to see if the person is really right for the job, make sure their tech knowledge is good if that is needed, also check they can get to the location where the job is - salary they are looking for, as sometimes people will just apply for anything and not realise that the job is 50 miles away and anything else on the job spec you think is necessary - for example the client may have told you that the role is seated somewhere on your own and you won't see another soul all day. I would check with the applicant if that is something they really want to do.

Invite the candidate in
I would invite people to come in and see me, as when the client signs a contract, it will usually say that the recruiter will meet and test all applicants. I also test (word excel and typing if for an admin/secretarial role). Then we chat for 20 mins - 40 mins. This would be going through their history, try to find out what they are looking for in a job, and find out more about them to make sure if there are a quite a loud character, you don't put them forward for a role on their own in the basement. Also when you get to know someone you can talk confidently about them and their strengths rather than solely depending on a piece of paper.
During this time, I would make people feel comfortable and listen to all they had to say, if some were shy or had bad experiences with agencies (haven't we all) I would explain to them that I like to bring people in that are suitable for a job I have. And make sure they know that I did the whole agency thing too and it was awful, this gains understanding from applicants and builds a relationship.
After this interview I would briefly pop to my desk and print out all the job specs I had that they might be suitable for, then I would talk to them about the job and the companies and see which if any they liked the sound of. The applicants could take the spec away with them to mull over. If in any event they were not keen, it was always my policy to convince them to go and interview. As you cannot tell what a company is like from a piece of paper.
In an occasion where I didn't think the applicant was right for any of the jobs I had, I would still talk to them about the job and give them a spec. The agency I worked for didn't want anyone leaving without anything in their hands. This seems cruel, but from my experience, at some of the agencies if I'd been given a job spec I wouldn't have felt the time I had spent there was pointless as I have done most of the time.






~Clients~
Submitting the candidates to the clients is fairly pain free, if you have a good relationship with the client, and knowing what the client wants will come second nature, you will see people and think - ooh that is a 'Barclays' person - for example. Someone that will fit in with the culture and the team, which is often as important as the skills themselves. In the event you have a perfect personality, but not the right skills, the sales ability comes into play. Then the back and forward with interview times is just the best fun - an obvious joke !!

~Getting the Job~
I would give pre interview advice face to face or over the phone for all my candidates. That would mean going through competency based questions, which seem to be all the rage these days and how to act, dress, where the location is etc. Often this would be outside work hours and I would call from my mobile while I was eating my dinner at home. Just to make sure all the candidates were prepared for what they might face. I wasn't given the interview questions - obviously, but from the job spec you can work out what they might be, and I would try to help the nervous, people who had not interviewed for a long time, people who had been made redundant, older people, younger people. It was pretty much everyone who was nervous on interviews. I would also make sure they had questions to ask and knew about the company.

When one of my candidates gets a job (even though I wasn't on nearly the same pay structure as the consultants) I would leap with joy. I would be so happy, I think it is one thing I miss about the job, seeing someone so happy and you making their day, the four other rejection calls I had to make were the downside!

We would then have to track the candidates through to their start date, checking if they had had any other offers, making sure the client had sent the paperwork and making sure your candidate had handed their notice in. This could be a long drawn out process at times.

~The Bad~

A lot of the time the good bits made up for the bad. But from my experience, my boss would call out I&O, which means in and out. This would be relevant just on what someone looked like. One of our clients like pretty young blondes, an overweight brunette with glasses and braces walked in and she was politely shown the door after having a super quick interview. A lot of pressurising was put onto the candidates if they did receive a job offer. Some consultants would make them hand their notice in so they could get that fee in the present month's figures rather than the next month. Or just pressurising to take the job. As I was not on commission and by trade am a customer services person, I hated being told to tell someone to take a job. Hence why I left. Some consultants would not call their candidates back which I hated as that happened to me so many times.

~The Conclusion~

With so many people applying for jobs, it is impossible to service all candidates how you would want to. Each 12 hour day for me was jam packed and I had no time to breathe, let alone have a lunch break, so some people did get left by the wayside. If applying to agencies through the internet, for the best response from them, I would make sure I looked my best when going to the agency, make sure my CV looked the part and was relevant to the job I am applying for. To be honest the last 5 months I have avoided agencies as they make my blood boil when they don't call or drop me an e0mail from time to time. I am also fully aware they are having to work much harder to get jobs from their clients as the clients would rather take a chance and advertise in the paper and spend £3k less than use an agency. So while they can be useful, sometimes if you don't look the part, you don't get anywhere with them. If you have had quite a few knock backs from them, try going in your best suit slapping some make up on making sure you smell clean and fresh, have a haircut etc, Or just go directly to the companies. That's what I have done !

If anyone needs any help with how to deal with any issues - I would be glad to help !

Thanks for reading - I know it was a long one !!

Summary: Some are good, some are not great - pot luck !!