Marc Bridgen

GigJunkie

4th Floor

95 Southwark Street

London SE1 0HX

Mob: 07974 670 946

Tel: 020 7593 3035

Fax: 020 7593 3029

Trading Company is Smart Tickets Ltd.

Registered Office: Avalon Accounting, Equity House, 4-6 School
Road, Tilehurst, Reading, Berks RG31 5AL.

Company Registration Number: 6023008

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Phil and Paul, Not surprised to read the list of grievances
candidates have against Recruitment agencies. Even companies have
been victims of consultants hounding them, being rude to them or being
bombarded with aggressive phone calls.

But hey, people choose the way they prefer to do business!

Possibly I am new to recruitment, but I don’t do business
the traditional way. We are small company and three altogether.

1) We recieve hundreds of irrelevant CVs for a job posted on
a job-board. For eg, I was looking for a Data Protection Manager. Candidate
must have an ISEB certificate in Data Protection. We would recieve CVs from
people who wouldn’t have a clue about data protection or might’ve come across
it the first time(if they take the time to read the JD). So when we recieve
hundreds of CV’s for one position, it is not always possible to reply to each
one of them. However, we do have to go through each one of them because we are
paying to place an advert on job-boards.But believe me, when I come across CVs
that do match the job description but for some reason cannot put them forward
for the role, I do email them and wish them good luck in their job hunt.

2) I love it when candidates take the trouble of giving me a
call to follow up once they’ve emailed me their CV or call to find out why they
were un-succesful. Phil, I would love to answer every question I know of if
candidates ask me but I don’t think its wise to go on and on about the details
of rejection when they show no sign of interest themselves. I don’t mind
telling them how many were put forward and why they were rejected. I guess, the
feedback helps them in being smarter and revise their CVs if necessary for
future applications.

3) We don’t have the budget to keep advertising the jobs
when it has already expired. I know there are companies out there who do it the
dirty way. We don’t and I am sure there are many out there who don;t!! Sales is
not all about fooling people!

4) As far as Treating candidates with respect, my colleagues
have come across candidates who in turn when placed became our clients. They
have used us for their staff requirements because of the respect and service
they recieved.

5) Whenever I have located a CV on job-boards which does
match the job description and I beleive he is a good fit. First thing I ask
when I call them is, "is it a convenient time to speak?". I read out
the job description to them briefly, talk to them about the salary. If they
show interest, I DO NOT forward their CV to the client there and then, I infact
email them the job description and the company’s details. Talk to them about
the company environment and culture (if its formal/casual, busy/relaxed,
tensed/spread out, etc) and then wait for them to email me their updated CV. If
there is a need to highlight a few things on the CV so that they have a better
chance to qualify for the job, I work on it with them!

I have made friends with candidates!

I love my job and I know some careless, greedy people out
there have spoilt its rep. But hey, some good ones are still alive. I am not
here on this forum to sell any of my services, so please do not freak out! I
have an enterpreneural flair and would love to develop my skills and knowledge
unlike others here.

Apologies for writing the longest email of the century!

Cheers!

Owais Amiri!

2009/3/19 phil jones <[address removed]>

I’d say that in current circumstances, we don’t want to be
hostile to
anyone who knows about good jobs

But I think there’s a great opportunity for a recruiter who raises
their game above the others. Way too many of them work on a "throw
enough mud against the wall" principle. Too many recruiters I’ve seem
post jobs to get you to register your CV and then you never hear
anything about the job you applied for but start getting spammed with
a lot of badly matching adverts that read like they’ve been scraped
off someone else’s site.

Or spammed with other "keep in contact" fluff. I swear that one
agency
spammed me last week with something about "how to write a great cover
letter" that was tied in with a story-telling festival or something.
Clever … but in a trite way. Making me think that these people had
no real information to give me.

Here’s what I’d like from a better recruiter.

1) Tracking of my CV application. When I send a CV to you for a job,
I’d like to see what stage it’s reached in the process. Did you read
my CV yet? Did you reject is as not a good fit? Did you reject it
because you didn’t think it’s good enough? Did you pass it on to the
employer and get a rejection back? Or nothing?

I won’t be offended or have my feeling hurt; give me real feedback
about my application. Tell me why I failed. THEN you can start giving
me advice on doing a better one, or applying for better fitting jobs.

2) Tracking the Job. It’s inexcusable to keep advertising a job that’s
already gone. Or that you’ve scraped off another site. I want an
agency that only shows jobs that that it’s been hired to recruit for
and has good knowledge of. And I want the agency to tell me, as an
applicant, what’s going on with that position. How many other people
applied? If I get rejected, how many other people are left in the
running? (Am I in the top 3 or was I filtered out when 50 others were
put forward?) And I want an email the moment you know that the job
went to someone else, so I’m not still wondering about it and can be
on to the next thing.

3) Give me as much real information about the company as possible.
Treat me with respect, not paranoia. If you help me find a job with a
great company, I’m not going to go directly to them and screw you out
of your middle-man fee. Don’t hide all the real information as though
I might.

4) Loads of other ways you can add value. When you post the salary
that’s offered, show me statistics of other, similar positions you
know about. Is this a good salary for this kind of job? Other sites
track the average salary for different positions, why can’t you?

5) Better filtering. I’m not a .NET guy. There’s nothing about .NET on
my CV. Sure, as a C, C++, Java, LAMP-stack guy I *could* learn .NET
pretty easily if I needed to. But I didn’t mention it. So why are you
sending me dozens of .NET jobs as "good matches"?

6) Why not find out more about me? You got a CV. Perhaps you could
have more online questionnaires. Take a leaf out of the social
networks like Facebook who are always asking me to classify myself in
different ways. Sure, I’m not going to tell you about "Things I do
when the boss isn’t looking" but there are some mutually beneficial
questions you can ask, to help me know more about myself and you (and
potential employers) to know more about me.

Recruiting has a bad rep. with a lot of people, because it’s just not
done all that well. Like I say, that’s a great opportunity for someone
to do it much better.

phil

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