Stop talking me down!

I’m done being criticised!

I work in recruitment. I am resilient. I am professional.

So someone in my industry let you down. It wasn’t me and it wasn’t my team.

Imagine if you said to someone “I am a PA” and they rolled their eyes and looked down on you. They then went onto LinkedIn and said all PA’s are money grabbing people that aren’t up to the job. Well that is what it is like for recruiters at the moment and I for one am fed up with it.

Our company strap line is “raising the bar within our industry”. I am passionate about recruitment consultancy losing the cowboy reputation. I can honestly say we don’t lie. We don’t persuade people to take jobs that aren’t right for them. We don’t talk down to them if they decline an offer and we do reply to calls and messages.

All our consultants are qualified by experience and REC exams and have many years in the industry. We get lots of positive feedback but every post where a recruiter states an opinion is beaten down by a barrage of “professional abuse”.

Recruiters are people and have a right to an opinion.

The recruitment model is currently such that there is a lot of contingency recruitment. Each vacancy goes out to multiple agencies and this encourages bad practice; ultimately it comes down to fast not quality work and corners are cut. Standards would rise if hirers chose one or two agencies and worked closely to ensure the best result not the quickest. Achieving this is not always easy when we our advice is taken with a pinch of “they just want to tie us in, it’s about their fee not us”.

Currently recruiters are losing their jobs as they are front line in a market that has been politically volatile for too long. While everyone treads water the first hit is headcount and that means recruitment is brought in house or simply doesn’t exist. Fees are beaten down and redundancies are made not just to agency recruiters but to in house also.

Please, when you go online to criticise our whole industry due to “something you heard” or one poor experience remember, recruiters are people too. They are battling on a daily basis to deliver results in a tough market and don’t need this constant battering. So much of our work is unpaid by our clients, that’s how it is. But keep it balanced. Had a good experience? Share that too. MOST recruiters are professional, skilled and good at what they do and do not deserve this very boring insulting behaviour.