[LRUG] Fwd: ADVICE

[Michael Pavling]

On 24 May 2013 11:11, Steve Buckley <steve at hackerjobs.co> wrote:

> There are two primary factors at play:
> 1. The extortionate costs in exchange for a poor service.
>  2. The deceptive and underhanded tactics practiced by the majority of
> recruiters in the agency industry.
>

That just about sums it up for me.

1. I've had recruiters try to beat down my day rate (my favourite question
of theirs: "What's the least you'll work for?"!), but when I've asked them
their margin, they refuse to move it.
I now won't work through an agency adding more than 15% to my day rate, and
if they start pushing me on price, I lower than to 10%. Another agent will
call me about the job if the client  is having that much trouble recruiting.

2. This is the biggie.
Essentially, recruiters don't work in the best interest of either the
client or the candidate. They get into the middle, and play one off against
the other to increase their margin. Withholding candidates (to the
detriment of both the client and candidate) because they either don't want
to "confuse" the client with too many CVs, or the candidate has hinted they
might be awaiting interview somewhere else (and the recruiter doesn't want
to look "bad" by waving a good candidate at the client, who then gets
snapped up somewhere else), and worst, if they have two clients after the
same skills they'll only put a candidate to one of them, and won't raise
the second unless the first says "no".

Now, I *know* that everyone has to make a living, and that not every
recruiter is the same, or as bad as the worst of them, and there are some
nice guys and girls out there trying to do an ethical job. But I could
probably count them on the thumbs of one hand.
And yes, I'm sure in-demand candidates can be prima donnas too; I've heard
tales of people exclaiming how they "won't get out of bed for less than
£70K".

But the issue is that in a market where the difficulty used to be
connecting people-with-skills to people-with-needs-for-skills, a
recruitment consultant was a necessary evil, and arguably did a "good job".

As social networking reduces the barriers in connection between clients and
candidates, the *need* for recruitment consultants is shrinking, and most
likely getting very specialised. Hopefully, in a more specialised market,
the ethical, good ones will remain, and the louts will go off to work in
boiler room scam call centres.
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