Recruitment industry days are numbered in Oz

Australian employers are following their US and UK counterparts and giving recruitment agencies the flick, as management accountants and the unemployed toast their demise.

Employers have finally realized they can hire staff themselves or appoint internal recruiters at one tenth of the cost of the fees charged by recruitment ticks, who have fed off corporate Australia for more than 30 years.

Recruitment agencies have been making anywhere from 10-30 per cent of a candidate's annual salary and about one-third of the fee goes to the recruiter, on top of their base salary. What for? For checking out a couple of databases, placing a $400 advert on Seek and short-listing candidates. The industry is wracked with over charging, incompetency and devious practices.

This is not a story about internal HR folk who monitor workplace safety, who do the hiring and firing and ensure people are paid and who keep the organizational wheels of a business turning. This is a story about private recruitment salesmen and women, the bottom feeders of organizational life.

Think I'm exaggerating. Then read this.

That story is a rarity. The reason is that print media generally don't run negative reports on the recruitment industry is because recruiters pour millions of dollars in to their coffers with job advertisements. Even the media can smell the stench of death and are circling for the kill.

I started a professional writing business www.republicresumes.com.au some years ago in Adelaide, specifically to fight recruiter age and race prejudice. I use propaganda and journalism skills to rewrite and format resumes so they go in to the 'must interview' pile. I've written about 800 resumes with a 70 per cent interview rate because I can out wit a recruiter.

I put the fear in to them that they might be passing up the best prospective applicant in Australia. I use the media to damage their brands when they knock back my applicants because of their age, gender or the colour of their skin. Do you know who recruiter's blame when their back's up against the wall? Employers. Talk about a plasticine spine.

Most weeks I have former or current clients ringing me up to dob in recruiters for a whole raft of scams and deceits. I always advise clients to go direct to employers but of course, recruiters still hold about 70 percent of all jobs listed – although that is falling.

How hard is it to break in to the recruitment industry? It's a little easier than breaking a fingernail. If you can sell gym memberships or work the phones in a real estate agency, you're not that far off winning the title 'Recruitment Consultant'. You don't need a degree to lie, cajole and deceive.

Until recently, recruiters in their 20s were dictating the terms to the clients. This would be fine if they actually could draw on some deep life experience or had a unique insight in to the human condition. As they have neither, most professionals are appalled and insulted.

One client in his late 40s, said two young female recruiters at a global agency in Sydney treated him like Regan and Goneril treated their Dad, King Lear. They were patronizing, hostile and devious. Where do these people come from?

The simple fact is that 90 per cent of recruiters don't know the training competencies and capabilities of the jobs they are trying to fill. Unless they are specialists (such as IT or construction), they have no idea what a job entails. Few have been to a mine or a construction site. Fewer are mentored and they rarely come in to contact with the employer's workplace. This makes them the dumbest people in the room.

False job adverts

If you look at Seek, CareerOne or recruitment websites you'll sometimes come across the vague adverts that recruiters place about a "leading online company" or "a well known blue-chip organisation." Why are the adverts so vague (and so badly written)? Most of these adverts are fake. The aim is to steal work from competitors.

Recruiters copy adverts posted by their rivals to try work out who the employer is. The fake advert will attract candidates who have already applied for a similar position. The recruiter will ask applicants a whole raft of questions about interview dates, what the company is looking for, where their offices are, salary details and which agency put them forward for the job. Once they have all the information they need, they phone the potential client and send them CVs to try steal the fee for the job. Cunning as the proverbial outhouse rat.

Recruiters are not interested in you the "candidate" or "client", rather the commission and KPI targets they need to keep their job. Why on earth would corporate Australia hire out their most important asset - searching for excellent staff - to a bunch of venal ninnies who traduce the respect of the candidates and by extension, the client's brand?

This is the account of a former recruiter who 'outed' the industry a couple of years ago. It's eye opening.

Recruitment Voodoo

Have you ever been asked to sit a psychometric test? They mix these up on the back of a truck and sell them to unsuspecting employers. Recruiters hit employers up to $3000 for the privilege of wasting the candidate's time with this psychobabble and sociobiological voodoo.

Never before in human history has so much bull dung been stacked so high as by the purveyors of psychometric tests. I've included a small article I wrote on the subject, which went down a treat with some recruiters.

Cultural fit

Some rejected candidates' say they were knocked out because they didn't conform to some sort of mythical template called 'cultural fit'. Back in the 1980s a few organizational theorists thought organisations had personalities and the way to improve their productivity was by hiring people with the same personality. What ever that was. It's absolute tripe. If you want to maximize productivity, get smart and cut external recruiters out of the loop and hire people on merit.

We know that organisations can be looked at mythically or by using metaphors but the term 'cultural fit' is one used to exclude candidates because they are too old, too young, too qualified, female or black. In fact, so much senseless and anti-intellectual rubbish has been written on this subject involving introversion and extroversion, it's no wonder recruiters flock to it like flies to a cow pat.

Conclusion

Some will say that it's only a small minority who are acting like this. That is not true. It's the 80/20 rule in reverse. 20 per cent of recruiters with morals, ethics and a spine, are carrying the rest on their shoulders. Is that sustainable? Of course not.

Some will point to code of ethics of the Recruitment and Consulting Services Association. Don't worry about regulation or a code of ethics. Most can't spell 'ethics'.

Over the next 20 years, Australia cannot allow these carpetbaggers and spivs, to continue to corrupt the recruitment process as the nation faces serious labour market changes and as the workforce ages. Send them packing now.