"Has anyone else experienced a lack of professionalism from financial recruitment agencies?"

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Q.

 
In my experience, financial recruitment agencies appear to be staffed with individuals ‘fresh from college’ who have no understanding of business etiquette or good business practice. I blame their managers rather than the individuals.

I do not believe I am the only individual who, having been notified by email of a suitable job opportunity on an agency website, makes a phone call for further information and is then submitted to the following course of events:

1. Can I speak to the agency consultant (say, Mr Smith]) referred to on the website?
2. Are you registered? (Yes) Do we have a current CV? (Yes)
3. Sorry, Mr Smith is in a meeting, out of the office or some other reason for non-availability.
4. OK, can you ask him to phone me regarding job ref xxx.
5. A day passes, no call. Two days pass, no call.
6. Can I speak to Mr Smith? I left a message about job ref xxx two days ago. Sorry, he’s not available at the moment. Can I pass on a message?
7. Two or more days pass, still no response from Mr Smith. And so it goes on…
8. After several calls, Mr Smith is finally available to take the call. No apology. By now the job has gone.

Worst culprits are Robert Half, followed by Hays Accountancy and Reed. It appears to be a problem endemic to the financial recruitment profession.

Has anyone else experienced this lack of professionalism? If I behaved like this with potential customers I would have no business.

A very frustrated,

D.R., UK

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Comments

[ML]

I agree with your comments. Only advice is work more with the 2nd teir firms.

WH Mark Sattin & Badenock Clarke has worked for me.

RHI is full of fluff not much to show.
Hays has been alright for me.
Reed is full of fluff aswell.

In regards to cold calling to make the pitch. You need to pick the right time of day.

Never ring before 10am (they would most likely be meeting candidates before 9am, team meeting before 10am). 12 - 2pm you can forget it, meeting candidate or having a long lunch. Also better to call 15 minutes to the hour instead of at the hour or middle of the hour because they would be ready to go into interviews or in the middle of interviews.

Hope this helps.

[nola brown]

I totally agree with the complainant. I have found Hays Company Secretarial to be very poor. They don't bother to return phone calls and aren't really bothered about working with you on a job unless you tick all the right boxes for them. Many of the agencies have staff who don't understand the service they are meant to be providing. One agent, Adam Ergin at Morgan McKinley, has been exceptional. He stands out from the crowd as he goes the extra mile in terms of his professionalism and his knowledge of his market.

[btucker]

I would add that it is not only Financial Recruitment agencies but completely across the board. The recruiters often have no idea on the jobs themselves or the requirements for the job. I also closely know two people who have been employed as recruiters for positions they knew nothing about at all. I personally detest the rise of agencies and wander what happened to 'Personnel departments' who once did this, 'Human Resources' doesn't appear to cover this anymore.

[Gareth]

Hi all, really interested to read all these frustrations with the recruitment process and agencies. On behalf of Workthing+, please note that we don't endorse the comments about specific recruitment agencies.

Of course it is true that there are good and bad individual recruitment consultants, as there are in every sector. On the whole, recruitment agencies are trying to do a good job - which is, placing the right person in the right role. They rely heavily on repeat business from employers, so getting it right is really important for them.

Some of the frustrations seem to relate to poor consultants; other frustrations seem to be to do with perhaps an expectation gap or misunderstanding of the role of the recruitment consultant. For me, realising that "when you're hot, you're hot; when you're not, you're freezing cold" is important: recruitment consultants will be very keen to talk to you when they have a suitable role, and you should be very responsive at this time. If they don't have a suitable role at present, they really don't have time to waste on taking your repeated calls or spending lots of time advising you - so you might well feel a bit frozen out, but don't take it to heart. And I always try to think: the better the consultant is, the busier they will be, and the more roles they will be handling.

ML's tip about picking the right time to call is really interesting. And I am sure there are lots of other tips that others can offer as well - please do keep adding to this interesting thread!

[Simon]

"They don't bother to return phone calls and aren't really bothered about working with you on a job unless you tick all the right boxes for them."

I think that's the whole point of a recruiter's job: to tick all the right boxes. Often they know very little about specific roles other than the ticklist in front of them. If you fulfil their criteria, they put you forward for a role. Simple as that. Recruiters aren't your agents; they don't work for you and they certainly don't owe you a living.

[Brian]

I agree with the comments above. I know that there are a lot of candidates looking for jobs and that these recruitment companies may be seeing an increased number of incoming calls from candidates. But most of these jokers claim on their websites that people are their product. So it's probably best to keep the product onside by taking their calls, or maybe even returning the call within 48 hours.

I now only look at jobs from direct employers and would only ever send my CV to a recruitment company if I thought I couldn't send it direct.

[pbw]

So here is my learnings:
1 - I doubt it is just one sector. IT is riddled with such agencies and people. I would not have enough space here to supply names and agencies, but Nexus is worth a top 3 place in the "black hole" awards.

2 - True that when you are hot you're hot, and when your cold the communication stops. If only they would actually say that you are cold!!! So you know where you are.

3 - Relationship with a head hunter? They come and go, move agencies, and when you have to explain what the technology/terminology in the advertisment (that they wrote) means.

4 - If only there was a way to sift and then talk to multiple companies directly :-(

[AB]

'potential customers'? Surely you understand that their customers are the clients that they are recruiting for i.e. the people that pay the invoices and not the candidates. We as candidates are simply a commodity and in the current market, the stockpiles are large!

[John]

I think most people understand that their loyalties lie with the company they are recruiting for, but remember todays candidates are tomorrows clients, and when treated badly by a particular recruitment consultant/agency, it will be remembered.

There are a number of 'cowboy' consultants/agencies around, and i particularly hate the way they pretend they are recruiting for a company, when actually they haven't been asked to recruit on behalf of the client.

Redrock consulting Ltd are particulalry good at this.

[John]

There needs to be more direct recruitment for things to change. IT recruitment agencies are getting money for nothing as they know nothing about IT. Getting a job in IT in this country is hard work due to this situation.

[Dan]

Beat the system by using two identities with similar skills: Mr X and Mr Y. Have two CVs with a very close skillset and get to the point in the recruitment consultant dialogue where the client name and contact details are revealed and go cold.

This is where Mr Y comes in: just send your CV directly to the company and a "speculative" approach, and you will most definately be considered as a contender for the role where there is no agency fee, which could tens of thousands.

At least if you don't make the probationary period, the client has lost nothing but everything to gain.

If more people did this, then we could expect to reduce the number of agencies with a stranglehold on the IT market, and, like an earlier poster lamented, see an increase in paper adverts for such roles which are like gold dust due to agency monopoly.

[PN]

I work for a Niche IT recruitment company and worked in IT in Defence before and I hated being treated like that so I always have time for a call, you need the good will of the candidates, just as much as you do the Client.
Most big agencies (Tier1) have the attention span of a gnat and are only on roles for 15 to 20 mins, then swap to a new one. so by the time you cann back they can't remember which one you are talking about.
This recession has cleared out quite a few agencies but a few good small companies still remain, if you are in doubt about a recruiter, see if they are on LinkedIn and see what people say about them.
Don't give up there are still quite a few good agencies out there where recruiters realise that one day they will need the services of a decent recruiter.

[Sean]

This thread makes me laugh!; on one side we have the seekers of employment, a career, etc. On the other, the (prospective) employers. Between them, the rec cons; all those seeking employment are supposed to adopt silly strategies, and creep round these Recruitment 'Consultants', to get their toe in the door, of the 'blessed' employer. Lazy Employers are the real cause of this farrago; all of us out here want to work; stop messing us around, you cretins!