Recruitment Agencies. Why?

Here’s some more frustrations on my current search for employment. I am now applying for roughly 17 to 20 jobs every ten days or so. From this I’m getting an interview round about once a fortnight. So far though I have only had one proper interview for the job I applied for and of course no job offers.

I’m getting close to having sent my CV to every recruitment agency in the West of Scotland. This is because nearly every job on the S1 Jobs site is being handled by a recruitment agency.

Anyway I got a call from an agency the other day. The woman on the other end of the line stated that I had applied for a Customer Service Advisor position. I hadn’t. I had actually applied for a job as a Data Entry Clerk. Immediate start apparently. The woman made no mention of this job, instead asking me if I was interested in working in a ‘contact centre’ in Cambuslang. No I am not. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I didn’t apply for that job. “I didn’t want you to apply for that job. I’d rather you applied for this one.”

Last week I was left a message from a woman at another agency telling me that she was ‘very keen’ to speak to me about ‘a couple of positions’. I returned her call, only to find that she was with a ‘candidate’. I left my details and awaited a call back. Which never came. A day later I received an e-mail supposedly from her, but actually from a ‘no-reply’ address saying, “we already have your CV on file. Should any suitable vacancies arrive we will contact you.’ So ‘very keen’ tuned into ‘don’t call us we’ll call you’.

So I’m not a fan of recruitment agencies. I fail to see their need, especially when they only seem to be on the lookout for themselves.