Every day now there are seemingly endless amounts of people ending up in the queues at the Job Centres. Even today, the Government are trying to help the middle classes who have found themselves out of work in this recession, with special initiatives to help them find work.
So, as someone who has spent their career in the recruitment sector, I find myself asking questions of the industry and whether there should be some evolution in the way that job seekers are advised to find a job.
I have recently questioned if it is right, to pay a career consultant to help find a job, which prompted some interesting discussion.
Today, I want to focus on recruitment agencies - are they a waste of time for job seekers?
Let me get this out first - I am not against or anti-recruitment agencies in any way, so don't mis-read what I am about to say. My point is one from the side of the job seeker.
First we need to spell out some facts:
- There is now 2 million people out of work
- Companies are making redundancies every day
- The amount of available jobs in the marketplace are shrinking
- Companies are freezing or reducing their recruitment budgets
Recruitment agencies and recruitment consultancies, make their money by placing people into companies, and charging them a fee to do so (either from a permanent or contract placement). They (mostly) provide a good service, and are able to source candidates that companies cannot typically find - hence the companies are happy to pay a fee for that service.
When anyone ever finds themselves out of work, one of the first places they turn to for help are the recruitment agency sector. Historically they have been a great way to get back to work, and access vacancies that you would not necessarily find in the media.
BUT, would it be right to now advise candidates to go to recruitment agencies to find a new job?
Personally I am not so sure. As a result of the recession there are two major implications for the recruitment agencies:
- They will have less vacancies to work on
- They will be inundated with candidates
So, unless you have specific industry skills, are a specialist in a sector, or are in an industry that still has a labour demand then I would say that as a job seeker, you are wasting your time even going to recruitment agencies in the first place in this current climate.
Having spoken to a number of agencies in the last couple of weeks, they are seeing record numbers of applicants applying for jobs and are themselves struggling to deal with the volume. It has become more of a random selection process for many agencies.So as a job seeker, unless you stand out, as a top performer or have specific skills, you are likely to be swallowed up in a huge pile of CV's, which grows by the day.
Also because of the budget cuts, many companies are not able to work with recruitment agencies, as they simply don't have the budget to spend on recruitment. The ones that are recruiting, are resorting to quickly learning how to recruit staff directly again, after years of relying on using agencies. They are using their own websites and placing adverts on to online job boards directly (which causes them a big issue - but that's for another day!)
So as a job seeker it is important to make sure you are looking at a range of job seeking options, but as I have said, I think that you could be wasting your time going down the agency route , for now.
What do you think? Do you work for a recruitment agency and disagree? or as a job seeker have I hit the nail on the head?
