Recruitment industry days are numbered in Oz

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.