Recruitment agencies... don't get me started!

At the risk of never getting a job through my agencies again, I am writing this post to vent!

What is it with recruitment agencies and their time-wasting tactics? Gone are the days when I used to believe them when a consultant told me they were putting me forward for a job. These days, I know that there are some dodgy dealings going on, and if I don't see the job spec, I don't want to know about the job!

Why, well it all started a few weeks ago - for those of you loyal followers of my blog, you know that I was made redundant...

So the first thing I did when I got to my desk was bash out my CV, and send it to all the agencies I could think of. for me, that was step one! Being a Tuesday that I got the news, it was too late for me to buy Monday's Guardian, but in my mind, at least I had started the find-a-new-job-quick process.

Oh, and I posted by CV on Totaljobs and Monster.

A couple of days later, I get an email from a recruitment consultant asking me to call. Weird,I thought, why didn't he just call me himself! But I called, I wanted to know what the job was...

After spending about 15 minutes describing my past experience... another boring thing to do - don't these people go through the candidate's CV before contacting them?? - I nearly choked on my hot chocolate.

"How would you feel about being put forward for a recruitment consultant job?"

The words still ring in my ears now. I can still hear the theme music for Jaws or something playing in my head.

Was this guy for real? I'M A JOURNALIST - WHERE ON MY CV DOES IT SAY I WANT TO CHANGE CAREERS AND BECOME A RECRUITMENT CONSULTANT????

Naturally, I had to ask the consultant this, because I was astounded. And I was a bit vex that I had used my own phone, charging me 10p/min for the privilege, to speak to someone who blatantly didn't bother to find out about me before contacting me!


Anyway, he wasn't the last...

There's another tactic that agencies use, which also annoy me. The call you up about jobs that they don't even have on their books. The idea I have been told (by another agency), is to gazump the agency who actually has the job, signed off by the recruiting company!

So what about the poor sods like me and other job-seeker's in the middle? People who waist money travelling to an agency to fill in their mountainous piles of forms - so they can scan them in because they can't be bothered to read our CVs properly - wasting money responding to their phone calls... and just wasting time speaking to them, regurgitating our working life's story when we could just be going online, or through the newspapers ourselves!

Would it really hurt to be honest with people and say that - like some agencies do - I like your CV, and I'd like to register you so we can move faster if an ideal job comes up?

Would it really hurt?