Is there an industry full of shonky and unethical operators as much as the recruitment industry?
Is there an industry full of shonky and unethical operators as much as the recruitment industry?
I received a phone call from a Melbourne client yesterday, who was approached by an agency in Sydney, as they had a candidate who was looking to relocate to Melbourne. This candidate researched relevant companies in Melbourne that matched his experience, so he called the agency in Sydney he was registered with and asked them to call this employer. They of course did, and then sent the resume along with terms and conditions. The client range the candidate and were happy with his background and were prepared to meet him, until they then read the terms and conditions.
A fee of $27,000 would be due if they employed this candidate.
For what? Making a phone call to the employer? The candidate had done all the research on finding the right organisation, so what is this fee for?
It is disgraceful that an agency would look to extort / rip off an employer in such a way, and no wonder the recruitment industry gets such a bad name.
Result is the candidate will now not get the job, and the agency will not get a fee.
Perhaps it would be more transparent, if agencies discussed their fees before submitting candidate resumes, and a lesson to all employers, ask the question before receiving resumes from agencies, as once you accept a candidate from them, you are locked into their fees.
As another example, for complete transparency, our fees are actually on our website, and how many other agencies do this? Not many, and I wonder why.
The employer has asked us to recruit for this role, so the issue now is that if this candidate applies to us direct, the other agency will still want their ridiculous fee as they “introduced” the candidate.
There are no winners in this one, and we will fill the role for a fee considerably less than this.
Large agencies charging such extortionate fees will have to learn that employers are no longer wanting to be paying such fees. We are seeing it so often these days that employers are steering away from these large agencies not only due to fees but also service issues.
As a business, we have so far generated revenue in 2016 equivalent to the total generated in 2015. We have done this not be charging extortionate fees or not honouring guarantee periods on “technical” issues. We have done this by offering as integral and ethical service and fee structure as we can.
We were recently advised another Sydney agency were wanting to charge a client a fee of 35%! Larger agencies in their flash high rise offices with $5,000 coffee machines will soon come to realise that companies are no longer prepared to pay for this.
They are wanting to pay for a quality service at a “fair” price.