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The recruitment agents weapon of choice

I’d like to think that I am nice enough, eloquent enough, and straight talking enough to always get my point across. I can in most cases deal with people well and I like to think that I can strike up a good rapport with them should I choose to do so. Now, obviously, the work place is an environment where one must try to be a) as informative b) as polite c) as honest as possible and for the most part this comes naturally. That is until recruitment agent’s call. Have you ever been in the situation where you are asked a question and you politely respond, only to be asked the same question again about 10 minutes later?

Don’t get me wrong some agents I love and they are on my list of lovelies, others are quite nice as I can say no thank you, I have a PSL that I’m happy with, and they get the message and call it a day, filing me forever more under no point in trying so don’t bother (YAY). Others however, and this is the big companies I’m talking about, decide to get every single member of every feasible team in the agency to call me at 10 second intervals to offer me all sorts of candidates, mostly IT (don’t get me started on that one, as when on earth was a digital marketing agency and IT company the same thing), and they keep going until I am frankly looking for their address on the web, some sort of weapon, and dialling for a cab to come over and recreating a scene from the film ‘falling down’.

This is such a regular occurrence that it poses the question what are my rights? If this was a stranger calling me at home, or an ex calling me over and over this would be harassment and I could take out an injunction. I have called back numerous times asking to be removed from databases only to be called or email again about 2 months later. I have been told that if these people are contacting me on behalf of a company then I literally have no way of stopping them other than being incredibly rude and frankly why should I have to be.

It is not only unbelievably annoying but it is such a waste of our time, as the poor receptionist has to make polite excuses all day and I still get emailed and have to respond.

We are a small but perfectly formed agency and therefore our recruitment needs are NEVER going to be huge and if they were I am certainly not going to be brow beaten into dealing with a supplier. Instead of investing time in sorting through endless, pushy agencies, Neoco has invested in building a ‘friends and family’ network so we can fulfil our needs from a relevant and reliable pool of skilled people, many of whom have come through our really popular, year round internship programme.

I appreciate that you have targets but unless you want to be one of mine, please please please do yourself a favour and think twice before you call me. My lovelies know who they are, so if your not sure then chances are you aren’t – so please call it a day.