We suspect Mr Carroll's postman may be delivering slightly fewer Christmas cards this year...

A Vacant Situation

Traffic Wardens get a very raw deal in my opinion.  Why? Because they regularly feature at the head of those noisome “most hated profession” league tables that PRs love so much (ironically, PRs are also universally reviled in these rankings, normally level-pegging with Estate Agents).

But I contend that if you ran a survey among marketing professionals as to their most hated occupation, our old friends ‘recruitment consultants’ would romp home with a larger margin of victory than Usain Bolt.

I recently made a less than complimentary reference to recruitment consultants in 'Joining up the Dots' which led to a rather lengthy, impassioned and somewhat inadequate defence of the noble arts of recruitment in the form of a published letter in The Drum. 

I’ve never – and I mean this  - met any agency owner who thinks that recruitment consultants are anything less than mercenary brigands who charge a lot, and provide very little in exchange. 

It’s a bit like the poser ‘what are wasps for?’   There is no positive answer.

I’ve met plenty of candidates – many during interviews – who naively defend their decision to supply their CVs to a recruitment consultant as being their understanding of how the job market works. 

Says who?  Well I think you can guess.

It’s very rare for the marketing media to criticise the role recruitment consultants play in the professional sector.  And no wonder, when one looks at how much money publishers make from recruitment consultants via advertising.  Why, there are even recruitment awards now to honour their efforts.

Consequently there’s very little industry debate on how unnecessary recruitment consultants are, how manipulative the process is, how needlessly expensive it all is.  No publisher leads a debate on how to find a better system. 

It’s a tad reminiscent of the Dirty Squad in late 60s/70s Soho defending their inability to reduce vice by saying  ‘Pornography has existed for centuries and it is unlikely that it can ever be stamped out’. The subsequent Government Corruption enquiry discovered there were other reasons (younger readers can catch up on this via the DVD box set of Ashes to Ashes).
      
So what would make for a better recruitment process for the marketing industry?

First of all, employers should boycott the use of recruitment consultants.  Many do, and they don’t suffer – far from it.  They advertise positions when they have them and the more savvy ones are constantly evaluating candidates from unsolicited CVs.

Secondly, candidates should eschew recruitment consultants.  They should learn, and quickly, that they don’t add any value, and should go directly to employers they fancy working for.  What’s so difficult about that in this day and age – you can use the Internet, and read the marketing press.  Can’t you? 

Also, work out the maths as to whether you’ll win the job against an equally qualified candidate if you come with a 25% commission on top.

Publishers shouldn’t worry unduly about the demise of the recruitment consultant because they’d be generating ad revenue directly from individual employers with actual jobs to fill (rather than the “PR Account Director, Midlands” type CV trawls they currently run on behalf of recruitment consultants).  Who knows, they may even make more money.

And, at a stroke, employers would be able to recruit better staff, pay better salaries and not jeopardise their businesses by hiring ‘over-sold’ goods who then turn out to be duck-eggs (they’re not going to get a refund anyway if they’ve employed said duck-egg for longer than 9.69 seconds).

Paul Carroll is the owner/operator of Zuma 011 and holds a strategic PR role for Peel Media's Mediacity development.

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Comments (24)

1  By Bill Daring , on 28-08-2008 14:33 I agree. Just to set out my credentials - see my latest blog about one agency that hve not performed and whose terms are not cceptble. (http://blog.kmp.co.uk/daily_digital/2008/08/recruiting-a-ne.html#comments). However, on the other side of the argument there are one or two agencies we use, who understand our needs and push the right calibre of candidates our way flexibly (i.e. freelance or salaried) at the rate at which we need them. Report

2  By Ian Carroll , on 28-08-2008 16:10 To reduce the dependancy on recruitment agencies read this article by Joel Spolsky:  http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FindingGreatDevelopers.html. One aspect of the article talks about engaging with your local developer community. The Northwest has a vibrant developer community with many events and special interest groups. Getting involved in it as a company will provide access to some great talent. Report

4  By Craig Sweeney , on 01-09-2008 09:36 Recruitment agencies are only as good as the people who manage them. They are often misdirected and given poor briefs or are asked to deliver unrealistic results. This is down to the quality of internal busniess managers or HR teams. There are some agencies who no matter how well you work with them will still be useless. But it only makes sense to stop using agenices (employers and potential employees) if there is a good internal structure to effectively manage a credible recruitment process. Report

5  By Robert Leggett , on 01-09-2008 10:27 Recruitment agencies have often been seen as a necessary evil, along with estate agents. Having spent a number of years in the 1990's working for a national recruitment agency, I was fed up with the way I was expected to prospect for business and place people, along with the way in which I was treated by my clients.  In fact, I was so fed up, I set up a company whose sole purpose was to reduce the amount of contact our clients have with recruitment agencies and to help clients reduce their dependency upon agencies.  Omni Resource Management Solutions mantra is "Recruitment Agencies are Expensive - you can depend on it, so stop depending on them!".  Professional recruitment agencies are still a very useful source of good quality candidates, but you must be careful to choose your suppliers carefully, and ensure you work closely with them, and not against them, to ensure they are fully briefed and updated. Only use an agency when you have exhausted all you direct sourcing methods, of which there are numerous.  I couldn't help noticing that Zuma 011 doesn't currently have a recruitment section on their website for prospective employees - something worth considering? Report

16  By Jephcott Associates Profession , on 22-09-2008 17:20 This is a very good article and I agree with everything said. Report

24  By Simon Wharton , on 12-10-2008 21:46 The problem with the majority of recruitment consultancies is that they do their jobs poorly. I particularly hate aggressive sales and spamming CVS. Recruitment should be about understanding the client and providing appropriate CVs. IMHO that is. One agency in particular despite me telling them I didn't want to be regularly cold called kept calling me. They also kept sending me unsolicted CVs. I even took the time to ring up to try and speak to a senior manager to get them to bugger off. They kept calling. That company was BD Recruitment.   http://blog.pushon.co.uk/blog/bd-recruitment-ltd-of-manchester-i-will-never-use-your-services/ Report