Bad Apples

Shari Last, Staff Writer

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Bad apples. You get them everywhere; in your office, on the football pitch, on trees. And you always remember them as opposed to all the lovely, juicy, healthy apples. As far as recruitment consultants go, many people wouldn’t trust them as far as they could throw them. Which is odd, considering the recruitment industry’s emphasis on customer service. Headway Recruitment’s mission is to “always practice efficient and professional procedures,” House of Recruitment is focused on “maintaining and improving standards of customer service,” and Bluefire accommodatingly promises to “provide hassle free personal service.”

The whole nature of recruitment consultancy lies in dealing with people, finding compatible circumstances and setting them up. Sort of like a dating service, but perhaps with the hopes of building longer-lasting relationships. When searching for a job or an employee, personality plays a large part (as it supposedly does in dating), so it is interesting that recruitment consultants have managed to acquire the image of pushy, incompetent bullies. This is, of course, a stereotype, and an extreme one. But nonetheless, stereotypes come from somewhere and it is usually the bad people in a particular field who end up representing the lot.

Ruth Halfpenny, from Red Recruitment, explains that consultants who are “too focused on the selling side of things end up not providing the right care for the clients.” Clients expect personal service – they are, after all, laying bare their life’s details in the form of a CV. So when a wolfish salesperson licks his/her lips hungrily and almost howls at the moon at the possibility of a job match, the client might understandably feel perturbed. Halfpenny stresses that the very worst reputation an agency can get is for “forcing the candidates into the wrong jobs.”

It is important to maintain the balance between being a good salesman and ensuring that the clients are placed into jobs which are suitable for them and for which they are sufficiently qualified. Colin Bernard, of Hays, states that “an agency’s reputation depends on its service to the candidates and to the corporate employers. If we supply under-qualified staff, or place candidates into inappropriate positions, we will lose.” Although under pressure to be productive and successful, consultancies are most likely to thrive by maintaining high standards and a positive reputation and not stooping to the lows of exaggeration, lying and bullying.

“It’s a shame that the one or two aggressive consultants can give such a bad name to the rest of us who all work hard to be as friendly and honest as we can,” says Emma Stewart from Search. It is evident that recruitment agencies recognise the importance of customer service, honesty and integrity. It is also evident however, that a single bad experience can outweigh fifty good ones. Another odd similarity to the world of dating...

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