The recruitment consultancy lowdown
8 top tips to using recruitment consultants
1. They are the ‘dating agencies' of the recruitment world…
...as they're meant to find a perfect match between employer and candidate. For the uninitiated, here's how they work: the recruitment consultant (or ‘RC') will be in constant contact with employers to see if they have any vacancies. When vacancies arise, and the employer wants to use the RC to fill them, the RC will search their database for suitable candidates, or place an advert in recruitment media. The RC filters through the rubbish candidates, and sends the employer a selection of the best CVs. The usual recruitment procedures follow, and the RC receives a fee for their hard work. Sounds so simple in theory, eh?
2. They're better than they used to be.
Time was when recruitment agencies used to be a bit slack. They would find only the most irrelevant of jobs - secretarial when you want to get into sales - or your details would mysteriously disappear into a recruitment agency black hole. These days, the properly accredited agencies are much more on the ball, and expect you to be too. Some - like Meta Morphose - provide you with training and support during the first year of your new role. So, if you find that they're not working hard enough for you - drop them. There is a code of practice that all registered agencies should abide by - they are not allowed to charge you for finding a job, and they are not allowed to make their recruitment services conditional on you using other services which they can charge for, like training. For details of this code of practice and your legal rights, go to www.rec.uk.com.
3. They're damn useful.
As everybody knows, researching all the employers who might one day want to employ you can take a long time, and then there's the rigmarole of finding the right contact and plucking up the courage to call them and tell them how they have to employ you because you really are the Greatest Human Being Who Ever Lived. Getting a professional to do all the searching and pleading on your behalf is a far more attractive option. Of course, it doesn't work quite like this - you still have to do your fair share of research, not least into the recruitment consultants themselves, and you need to be as on-the-ball as in any recruitment situation. But for some job roles - IT, sales, recruitment consultancy itself - using a recruitment consultant can be just the ticket to access the hundreds of jobs that never get advertised. In a sense, joining a few good recruitment agencies is the equivalent of months of vigorous networking - they have the contacts, so why not exploit them?
4. They're damn useful for employers, too.
Employers like to save pennies, hassle and admin as much as the rest of us, so the recruitment agency can be a graduate recruitment God-send. It is expensive and, frankly, a bit of a faff to produce and place an ad in recruitment media (it must take time to come up with all those ‘Proactive self-starter with an eye for detail' clichés). It's equally time consuming to sift through hundreds of unsuitable CVs before going through the usual interview shenanigans. Much better to get someone to do all that work for you, and then look through a few ideal CVs when you can spare a minute.
5. There are a lot of them out there.
Over 13,000 in the UK alone, at the last count, and with a collective turnover of approximately £23 billion. Clearly, recruitment consultants are big business these days, and they all want a piece of graduate pie to help them along their way. Add to this the fact that around 19 per cent of graduates use them every year, and you soon realise that it's important to know what you're doing. Make sure you research the agencies and sign up to the right ones for your needs. Who are their clients? What job roles do they cover? How many people do they place every month?
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