the adventures of pinkaholic girl

why I hate recruitment companies

I really, really hate recruitment companies.

They are a bunch of lying, incompetent, smelly, no-good, soul-draining money grabbers who only ever have their own interests at heart. There is seriously nothing they won't do to make money, and it's really disheartening to think there are people out there who choose to make a living by screwing people over every single day of their working lives.

Recruitment in the UK is split into two streams - permanent and contract. Every time a permanent agent lands someone a job, they get paid a lump sum of money. I've heard figures like 5,000 pounds per job, which seems outrageous and explains why they don't care if they screw you over, as long as you sign on the dotted line. Contract agents get a certain amount of money per day you work, which ranges from zero to however much they can fleece off the top of your contract rate while you're not at your bargaining best. This also explains why they don't care if they screw you over, because once you've signed a contract you can't change the rate, and some contracts have clauses saying they you can't leave halfway through. My experience with recruitment agents has varied from 'okay' to 'terrible'. The two I happened to sign on with so far have fallen into the lower half of the scale...

My first recruitment agent:

• Called me EIGHT times in the space of 90 minutes after the interview to pressure me into a decision
• Completely lied about the length of contract by a factor of three to make me accept it
• tried to deny that they'd lied about the contract length AND the amount of money they were earning from the contract (as reasons to not pay me more money for a 1 month contract vs. 3 month contract)
• Attempted to re-sign me even after the whole "oops, I know we screwed you over" situation
• And the worst part: they screwed up a week of my pay and took it back from my payroll provider. A week is a lot of money when you've only worked for one month. They STILL have not fixed it 16 working days later, despite me calling them numerous times, re-faxing my timesheets and emailing them twice. And I called them first working day of the new year, was assured I'd get paid before the weekend, and still have no money!!!
  

My second recruitment agent:

• Lied about the contract length (although only by weeks instead of months this time)
• Gave me wrong information about the start time so I turned up late and looked like an idiot on my first day
• Lied about the fact that they are working exclusively with this client... which they aren't
• and are probably making about a 100 pounds per day from me after I found out how much the other recruitment agency were paying their contractors

It makes me fed up more than anything else... it's really maddening to go into the job hunting process EXPECTING to be lied to and screwed over. I don't care that they make money, I know they have to, but I'd think 20 pounds a day per contractor is reasonable, not a hundred. They'd have thousands of contractors signed on anyway, they can't be classed 'poor' by any stretch of the imagination. All their hard work is at the beginning of a contract; once they've set up the agreement, they just sit back and watch the money pile up in their account. It just makes me cranky.

That is my rant for the day. I just really, really had to get it off my chest.

posted by d @ 11:29 pm