Agencies

Agencies Out of Control

I have been dealing with Agencies for many years, but since they were de-regulated in 1997 (in the UK), they have become totally intolerable (those overseas too). That is why the UK government had to introduce the The Conduct of Employment Agencies Act 2003 (see link below). Some of the bad behaviour is as follows:

Lying and using false identity
Pretending to be company employees
No knowledge of the industry
Storing your details when requested not to
No knowledge of what the job specification means
Trying to get the candidate to do it for them
Using "word match" software
Sending out hundreds of emails and then ignoring you
Calling themselves 'Consultant' when low level salesmen
Hiring people who know nothing about Engineering
Arranging phone calls and then not keeping them
Not keeping you informed about an application
Once your CV is submitted ignoring your phone calls
Providing back handers to companies and fraud
Advertising jobs that do not exist to collect CV's
Pretending to have submitted your CV
Not being open and transparent

ad nausea.

I therefore insist on a Service Agreement, with penalties for miss-behavior. So far three have signed.

Now that things are picking up, this page is getting hundreds of hits. Will you sign Mr Agency? Are you special or like all the other dross?

My Service Agreement is like a very fine filter that rejects all the rubbish and allows through only the professional.

The Recruitment Industry

The act of getting a job in technology used to be a fairly simple process - but it has now been transformed into an industry by psychologists and the technically ignorant. HR departments in technology companies are staffed by technically incompetent people and have been sold a lot of nonsense (see psyco-babble) by psychology companies.

These companies try and persuade they have a magic formula for selection - when in reality they are just trying to make a buck out of a false premise which produce false results. If you are interested, follow the link above and read my article. Feel free to download it and distribute.