It's worse than that
They're fucking useless from an employer's perspective too. They don't actively seek out anything, simply send you whoever they've got on their books who remotely matches your job spec.

I have absolutely no idea why employers ever use them - they should advertise directly (it's easy enough with all the jobs websites out there these days, and was even easier when it was all done in the local paper/trade press). The couple of hours you spend trawling through unsuitable CVs is more than compensated by their comedy value, you still get to see the same 5 people who are any good (because as well as waiting for agencies to do their job, they also apply for jobs directly) that you'd actually want to interview.

And then once they filled your job, they leave the advert on their websites for months and months afterwards just to try to keep luring prospective employees onto their books under false pretences.


I once (in more naive days) spent nearly £2500 on "executive recruitment consultants" who promised to "put me in touch with the unadvertised jobs market". Their solution was that I contacted companies directly rather than waiting for them to advertise a job. FFS, for £2500 I want YOU to deal with all the applications shit and let me know when to turn up for the interviews you're going to get me. Fucking lazy tossers.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Fri 28 May 2010, 13:56, Reply)