So one week of fairly solid job hunting down and time for a progress report.
Phoned up about 9 roles during the last week. Spoke to four people; as usual the other five exist in some inaccessible limbo land where nobody can reach them. All four liked the CV and thought it was relevant. It’s been submitted to the client for three of them. The fourth one I bailed out of; not only did the “person specification” (five pages of it) not match the job description (only four pages for that one), they wanted someone to do everything for them on demand, work long hours and weekends on short notice and pay peanuts. Sorry, not interested.
However, the other three…
One, the client won’t take on anyone without Local government experience. No matter that the role is one where the job to be done would be the same regardless of where you were last time round, we only want people who already work here. So much for bringing in external expertise then; all they are going to interview are people from a limited and almost certainly out-of-date pool.
Two,the agent hasn’t heard back yet, a week later. Given this is a “must be free to start immediately” role, that seems a little surprising. Then again, while the work is interesting the rate isn’t that special and the location is frankly horrible – just too far to commute, nowhere civilised to stay, not even very nice scenery. Still, not dead yet, merely sleeping.
Three, again no response from the client to the agency as yet. so either that’s a dead one or once again the job isn’t as urgent as they thought it was. Heigh ho…
Talking with an agency the other day was a bit worrying. We mostly realise that the agencies aren’t actually that interested in the contractors they’re supplying these days, but it seems that any role will garner 100+ applications within 30 minutes of it appearing. More worryingly, the standard business model is to send in as many CVs as the client wants to see (usually 3-5) so they’ll use the first ones they come across with all the relevant key words in them (that’s anywhere in them; they aren’t going to waste time reading what they say after all). Which makes it rather tricky to sell your services, when you think about it.
Perhaps I should stick to writing. Anyone got an good ideas for an international best seller…?
the problem is and will continue to be, that the larger agencies are on minimal rates from the clients, who also insist on a set procedure or number of hurdles to be overcome.
many demand 24 hr turnaround and ” must be avail for immed start” in order to get cvs in quick and make the process seem efficient. major hold up is often hiring manager not viewing cvs for several days, putting spec live when going on holiday etc etc.
most agent contacts have little or no influence on the process and as such are embarrased to admit this, or to have the same daily conversation..no news yet.
as mal has found there are a number of smaller agencies who go the extra mile