John McCoy of Pathway

[phonemonkey]

yes, of course I do - that is why i earn money, by selecting and finding the best - it is my job to filter candidates. its not arbitary, i act as a first round of interview.

[decode]

Well, the agency would have to interview a whole bunch of candidates and understand the technology and project fully. This is called added value.

However, it's cheaper to let the client do that instead.

I've never worked with an agency yet who added any value. Most of them don't even understand their clients requirements properly and ask ridiculous questions when they phone you.

I've had agents phoning me asking me what a particular technology the client included on the job spec was! How can they possibly hope to send over the most suitable cv's?

[phonemonkey]

you should have used a better agency

[tim123]

its quite simple really, i know my market, i know my technologies, i understand my clients needs and my candidates motivations.

i do my best to match these things up.

with regards to rejecting 97% of suitable applicants of course i do. if i've got 140 responses and around 40 of them are good enough I'm not going to send 40 CVs to my client. that would be pointless.

i pick the best and they go across.

I don't believe that there are always 140 suitable responses.

Remember, contractors often see the other side of the recruitment process.

All the time I hear client managers tell me, "Despite the fact that you are not a 100% match for this job, we rarely see a CV that is. We have to compromise."

My previous manager spent the whole 12 months that I was there, looking to increase the size of his team by 6-8 people. In 12 months he managed to recruit just 4 people and 2 of those were raw gaduates that had previously done a summer placement with him. When I told him that I didn't want to renew (because I found travelling to the location too inconvenient) he was still looking for 4 new people. He just couldn't get them.

Now, this says to me, that if my CV is a good (lets say 80%) match for a job and I don't get an interview. Either the agent has filtered me out for his own reasons (which might include that the job never existed) or the client is being ridiculously picky and leaves the job open for months (which IME many are doing).

I do not believe the story that it is because there were 100 people who were a better match than me, one or two perhaps.

tim

[decode]

you should have used a better agency

Yes, one of them was Pathway.

[Mustang]

As a project manager in one sector, keen to move into other sectors I find it very frustrating to come across an agent that wont put my CV forward in a sector despite my years of experience as a PM and a proven track record. I would rather the end client decide if I could run one of their projects NOT the agent.....!!

[phonemonkey]

so every CV that comes applies should go across?

[malvolio]

As a project manager in one sector, keen to move into other sectors I find it very frustrating to come across an agent that wont put my CV forward in a sector despite my years of experience as a PM and a proven track record. I would rather the end client decide if I could run one of their projects NOT the agent.....!!

Which goes back to my original point here, and one of my long standing assertions - good IT people in non-niche areas can do any bloody job they put their mind to. I've built three complex Service Desks for three clients, but can I get a job doing one for a bank? Nope, no banking experience (despite the CV having Flemings, UBS and Barclays on it, incidentally) in my last three jobs and despite what I do being largely industry insensitive.

That's not the client speaking, that's the agent trimming his over-large list of applicants to manageable proportions. If, however, you properly represented us to your clients, you wouldn't have to; you would know who does what and who can do what. But that takes you out of the comfortt zone and there's no money in it, so why bother. Until, of course, average margins are driven below 9% by the big boys and the PSLs...

The reality is you act as an exchange, not a filter. We can do the work, the clients want work doing, the agent is merely the conduit. If you want to add value, give us clear B2B contracts, we'll opt out of the regs, you can ignore S134C and we'll pay you the commision rather than the client. Feeling brave?

[BoredBloke]

"you should have used a better agency"

That wouldn't work as they wouldn't have the role. The client chooses the agency, not the contractor. The contractor chooses a role from an advert and then picks one of the agencies working for the end client.

I've worked for loads of agencies and can't think of much value they add to the whole process. Place the advert and wait. I tend to call the agent as the CV is making its way to get my name kin his head. I also only go for jobs where I'm a close match - should really start looking into blagging a career change though as I want more cash.

[Buffoon]

so every CV that comes applies should go across?

How about this.

Dear Client,

Please find attached the top three CV we received for your role.

The campaign resulted in 100 applicants. In our opinion 62 of them were numpties and were not worthy of consideration. One was from someone called Chico, who is on our blacklist. That leaves 37 possible candidates.

Our proprietary filtration techniques reduced that 37 to 10. (Sally phoned ‘em up and if she thought that they sounded creepy then they were rejected).
We selected the final 3 though our normal lucky dip methodology.

If you do not like the three candidates we offer you can find the top ten list here http:// …. , the 37 list here http://...., and the full 99 (less Chico) here http://.....

Yours,
DumArseAgent.