Another view

I have worked in recruitment. I wouldnt recommend it but it keeps the wolf from the door.

I've done two jobs in high street recruitment. The thing that bothered me was, that you are supposed to be trained up by people who have no interest in you doing well, as if you do, you are a threat.

This means they only help the people stay who they see as not a threat. I've seen this in a few sales jobs.

You can do the best job you could possibly do, but if you dont hit the numbers they want, or if they take a dislike to you, you are out.

The other thing I dont like in this sort of job, is that to establish dominance, you are expected to suck up unfair criticism or jokes at your expense, and if you dish it back, its seen as you being arrogant.

If you can tug your forelock while lazy fuckers tell you how they are great while looking like they are scared of you, give it a go.

I reckon it could be an ok job, if it wasnt for the shitty management style that has people fighting against each other like cat and dog rather than helping each other.

Call centre work is better to be honest.

I suspect being a rep would be similar but better.

Be aware that the rate of staff turnover in recruitment is high. They have no interest in helping you, its just sink or swim.

If you are good at brown nosing, it could be the job for you.

I'd love to get into a technical job to match my engineering degree, but mostly I do shitty sales stuff where they treat you like shit, because you are a disposable resource rather than someone worth investing in.

The view from the other side

Continuing this theme of recruitment consultant hatred here is a view from an acquaintance from the other side:

It was the worst job I have ever had in my life.

Not only do you have to be professionally two-faced, lie on a daily basis to both clients and candidates but you also have to be completely cold-blooded and uncaring.
I worked in quite a small market placing people into Social Housing positions. The jobs weren't particularly well paid in the first place, and then you had to take a cut of it - so a £10 an hour placement quickly became a £6 an hour job for the candidate.

I went home thoroughly demotivated every day. The culture is competative and the majority of recruitment consultants only cared about how big a margin they could negotiate and how much money they earned. Very, very few actually had anything interesting about them.

What has happened over the last few days

I got caught in the fake job bullshit again, in that normally big recruitment agency firms like Reed or Man power rarely have fake jobs, but quite recently even they have been putting up fake jobs and just lying through their teeth. I was told by Reed Manchester that there would be a job at Cowgill Holloway in Manchester. But I know the HR person there, and know of a couple of people who have survived the chop. I phoned them up immediately after the call with the agent, no such vacancy existed. Same thing happened with CLB coopers.

Some recruitment firms are even worse in that they simply make up a name of an accountancy firm, they thing we are stupid or something? In that we can't search the ACCA or ACA or CIMA lists if these companies exist or not? Or even just go through Yell?.

I've always hated people who have given false hope to others as it would be better to have not given them hope in the first place.

Apprentices to be paid £2.5/h

From here

So apprentices are to be paid £2.5/h erm apprentices are already paid £95 a week so what is the difference then?

Lies, damned lies, statistics and labour government propaganda.

Here

For November 2009 to January 2010:
The employment rate was 72.2 per cent and there were 28.86 million employed people.
The unemployment rate was 7.8 per cent and there were 2.45 million unemployed people.
The inactivity rate was 21.5 per cent and there were 8.16 million working age inactive people.
The employment rate for the three months to January 2010 was 72.2 per cent. The rate is down
0.3 on the quarter and it has not been lower since the three months to November 1996.
The number of inactive people of working age increased by 149,000 over the quarter to reach a record high of
8.16 million.
The number of people in employment was 28.86 million in the three months to January 2010,
The number of people in part-time employment was 7.70 million in the three
months to January 2010,
The number of people in public sector employment was 6.10 million in December 2009, up 7,000
from September 2009.


Hold on inactivity? I'm sorry do you mean unemployment? so there are 2.5million officially unemployed and yet there are also 8.2million who are inactive or as we would normally call them unemployed. So you mean there are 10 million unemployed then?

Spit it out, an unemployed person is somebody without a job, a bitter pill no matter how you dress it up with an euphemism it is still a bitter pill.