Quality of IT Recruiters
This comment, on the quality of IT recruiters, was posted as comments by a reader.
Agents Did Their Jobs
Once upon a time agents did their jobs well.
I remember starting in contracting 10 years ago and, in general, agents performed the function of matching demand and supply in the contract market in an effective manner.
They took a good cut but nonetheless the job was done.
Lack of Agency Knowledge
How times have changed. For me the quality of IT recruiters is now very poor indeed. You could write a book on this but to cut to the chase:
(1) severe lack of skill in the agency world to pick up, read a CV and get the measure of a candidate – that’s if they ever bother to read the CV
(2) lack of trust; can you ever trust an agent and what they say about anything at anytime? Are those jobs on Jobserve real? Or are they just harvesting CVs? Trust an agent at your peril
(3) they do their clients – the companies we want to work for – a gross disservice by not working hard to find the best candidate. Perhaps this sounds naive and I should join the real world. But I know the real world – agents have other agendas like sending the candidate that will get them the best rate etc
What’s the Point of Agents?
So what is the point of agents then?
I agree by and large they own the contracting market space.
But I put it to you that they fail to do their jobs by efficiently matching supply and demand.
The cost of this to industry must be staggering.
I’ve spoken to several companies and they loath using agents, and contractors dislike them.
So what is the point?
The quality of IT recruiters has declined alarmingly.
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The trouble with Agencies and their staff is that it is a cut throat sales driven industry where agents are increasingly driven to sales at what ever cost. They tend to have high turnover as a result and enough effort is not given to nurturing relationships. I have come across a few agents who see it as a career and take the time and effort to look after candidates but even they are beholden to their Clients not the job seeker.
I think until companies and agents start to see the value of treating everyone as humans then this situation will prevail.
Since I started contracted most HR departments avoid direct hiring and work through a small set of preferred suppliers. I leave it to readers to draw their own conclusion about the “incentives” HR departments are given by recruiters. Surely the near-monopoly situation this generates means that agencies don’t have competitive pressures that force them to up their game.