Huxley Associates

[kingcook]

Is there any chance I could have two recent references please. I can't proceed any further without them.

People taking the p155, very funny

Seriously though, we should turn this into an opportunity. Andy is in a position of power at a large agency. Let's try and get things changed for the better.

EDIT: I didn't mean to sound like David Cameron

[RasputinDude]

Hi, that's correct. I am a Director at SThree.

Wow, serious respect to you for coming back. I didn't expect that, to be honest. I must be honest, I no longer even bother responding to jobs advertised by SThree. I'm still on the mailing lists, but they just get deleted now. The last time that I had serious interaction was around eighteen months ago.

I'll try to respond point by point:

It's not completely unheard of that certain clients require references up front - but grant you it is not the norm.

Most of us are sensible enough to know that at some point clients will want a reference. However, my experience in dealing with the Manchester office is that you don't get put forward for any role "I can't put you forward without those references" without supplying them. On one occasion, I did provide references with express proviso that the referees did not want to be contacted unless they were requests for a reference. One of those referees was then added to a mailing list and got subsequent calls advertising potential candidates. Not cool.

It is of course your choice whether to provide them, I am fairly sure that if you are spot on for a role the act of politely declining wouldn't affect your application.

I would suggest a bit of a mystery shopper experiment may be needed here.

When I was a recruitment consultant I generally liked to take references as it allowed me to represent candidates with a lot more confidence.

A fair point, but bitter experience on our behalf makes us very wary.

Plenty of contractors ask for changes. Our standard terms will not reflect the exact requirements of each of our contractors. It is not up to us to decide whether your contract or assignment is caught by IR35, but we are happy to ensure the contract reflects the nature of each assignment.

Again, I suspect that a mystery shopper exercise or a bit of re-training may be required here because the effort required to get contract variations is absurd. I have heard more than once (not just from SThree) the phrase "every other contractor has signed the contract" or "it's a standard contract and it can't be changed".

I can't speak for every consultant in our group, but we actually have so many live vacancies I'd be pretty surprised that we had time to put out fake jobs in a phising exercise, if you have an actual example please give me names and dates. I don't believe it is acceptable behaviour and if we find it happening we'll deal with it.

I can't speak for every other contractor either. I'm afraid that I no longer have evidence of a phising exercise - I used to, but I filed it under "life's too short". I hope that other contractors will be able to supply some.

Again, good on you. I hope that this is an opportunity to mend some of SThree's reputation on this forum.

[eek]

People taking the p155, very funny

Seriously though, we should turn this into an opportunity. Andy is in a position of power at a large agency. Let's try and get things changed for the better.

EDIT: I didn't mean to sound like David Cameron

I know it just seemed that no one got the joke exactly right.

As for questions I don't really have any or complaints. I'm trying to shift out of bum on seat contracting so its not really my comment but I do think you need to use other offices to do some mystery shopping.

[Andy Hallett]

All fair points guys. I'll be doing some mystery shopping over the coming weeks.

If any of you encounter ANY service issue with SThree companies you can contact me via here.

[psychocandy]

Fair play to him for coming on here like. Be interesting to see what happens.

I do wonder though whether its the individual agents pulling these tricks or whether management know all about it? I'm always wondering whether its individual agents who will try all sorts just meet their targets by hook or by crook.

[rob s]

I suspect it's individual agents. I've been contacted by really good and really bad ones in the same office.

[Taita]

Hi, that's correct. I am a Director at SThree.

It's not completely unheard of that certain clients require references up front - but grant you it is not the norm. It is of course your choice whether to provide them, I am fairly sure that if you are spot on for a role the act of politely declining wouldn't affect your application. When I was a recruitment consultant I generally liked to take references as it allowed me to represent candidates with a lot more confidence.

Plenty of contractors ask for changes. Our standard terms will not reflect the exact requirements of each of our contractors. It is not up to us to decide whether your contract or assignment is caught by IR35, but we are happy to ensure the contract reflects the nature of each assignment.

I can't speak for every consultant in our group, but we actually have so many live vacancies I'd be pretty surprised that we had time to put out fake jobs in a phising exercise, if you have an actual example please give me names and dates. I don't believe it is acceptable behaviour and if we find it happening we'll deal with it.

"I can't speak for every consultant in our group, but we actually have so many live vacancies " Simple - you are a Director. Get together with your Board and issue a notice making unethical behaviour/ sharp practice a sackable offence for your consultants. If you don't do that you are condoning their actions and your credibility is much diminished as more of these stories are circulated.

[kingcook]

"I can't speak for every consultant in our group, but we actually have so many live vacancies " Simple - you are a Director. Get together with your Board and issue a notice making unethical behaviour/ sharp practice a sackable offence for your consultants. If you don't do that you are condoning their actions and your credibility is much diminished as more of these stories are circulated.

Andy: Board, we need to sack agents who use dirty tactics.
Board: Great idea Andy! Where did that come from?
Andy: Some random stranger on some web forum told me to do it!

[Wanderer]

Simple - you are a Director. Get together with your Board and issue a notice making unethical behaviour/ sharp practice a sackable offence for your consultants. If you don't do that you are condoning their actions and your credibility is much diminished as more of these stories are circulated.

As an organisation with over 400 employees we won't always get it right, so it's important we learn from our mistakes.

At a high level you can keep your head in the sand and say you are not aware of sharp practices because you don't get involved with the day to day running of things, it's a nice facade of plausible deniability and a standard trick for high level people.

If anyone ever gets caught, the scapegoat gets disavowed saying this was just "one bad agent" who will be "severely reprimanded and sent away for reprogramming" and in the mean time the rest of them carry on doing exactly the same thing. There's no interest in stamping out the sharp practices because it would damage your business - anyway that's the way all agencies work.

As for the mystery shopper exercise, you're recording all your phone calls, right? So why don't you review some of them and see how your agents operate. Of course you don't need to that because you've been there and you know what a dirty business it is. Boys and girls fresh out of uni and working on a job with low salary and big commissions are going to do whatever they have to. Some will become scapegoats, but they are just collateral damage in what's a hard nosed business.

It's not completely unheard of that certain clients require references up front - but grant you it is not the norm. It is of course your choice whether to provide them, I am fairly sure that if you are spot on for a role the act of politely declining wouldn't affect your application. When I was a recruitment consultant I generally liked to take references as it allowed me to represent candidates with a lot more confidence.

But you skirt around the fact that the primary reason for taking references is to generate leads. Agents trying to get opportunities from the references we pass to them annoys the hell out of our references and this makes us feel very uncomfortable as our referees are people we hold in high esteem.

The other one that agencies frequently abuse is the "opt out" of the Agency Conduct Regulations. I don't know about the SThree group but many agencies go to great lengths to coerce contractors to sign away their statutory rights by opting out.

All that said, I'm not having a go at you or your group personally. I have a big respect for you putting your head in the lions den by coming on this forum. The problem is with the game, not the players and as contractors we just have to live with it.

[Andy Hallett]

Reply to Wanderer

My ability to use forum quoting is pretty poor but I'll try and address the points. Also I'd really prefer someone kicked off another thread or admin renamed it to a more general title as the act of me bumping a thread accusing Huxley Associates of underhand practices is a little bit counter-intuitive to me!

My role has been away from the 'front-office' for a number of years now. The comments I can make are generally from a mixture of having been an agent / office manager until 2005 and the broader role I currently do - which if you are interested in is available on LinkedIn.

One of my teams look after over 1000 contractors across the globe, although they are not at the 'sharp-end' as they are already on assignment. I have always found if you are honest, pay on time and deal with any issues in the agreed timescales we have next to no issues.

My role aside, I don't think it is acceptable practice to glean information from people to use it in a way that someone has not agreed to. I genuinely don't believe my organisation has an institutional issue with this, but I will take all the comments and feeling on board and investigate.

I don't disagree that references can be used to build databases. If you value your references, use them sparingly. Any decent agent will understand your willingness to do that.

Interesting point you make about the 'game', contractors play their part in that game. In the same way we are often judged by our worst, the same is true of contractors. Every time one of you guys fails to turn up to an agreed interview, bad mouths us to our client or threatens to walk off-site for trivial reasons it brings down the professional contractors.

I've had some great relationships with my contractors over the years. They are great for helping us agents learn the industries which we trade in, are a brilliant excuse to get a pint / lunch on my company and some some of them have even become friends (yes really).

Agents who do well realise that it is a symbiotic relationship, you generally need us and we certainly need you.