I’ve been getting an increasing number of emails from agencies over the last few weeks. This is of course a good thing, since it both indicates that the market is starting to pick up again, and people think my CV is worth following up on. So clearly a cause for celebration.
Or is it?
Firstly, the market is definitely picking up. I am seeing more and more roles in my sphere of work, and while there is a preponderance of improvement programmes and the like, there are also a lot more development roles coming out. So clearly UK PLC seems to be gaining in confidence. Unlike UK Public who still seem to be listening to the eponymous Mr Balls rather than trying to look at the reality.
Secondly, these agents are clearly searching their own resources to find people since none, or very few, of the roles appear on the job boards. This again is a good thing, surely, since it means they are starting to apply a little intelligence again rather than Broadbeaning everything and waiting for the CVs to arrive.
And thirdly the emails are coming from agencies I don’t normally work with, so they are pulling my details from either the few boards that have a searchable copy of my CV (sorry, my company’s sales brochure), or from LinkedIn, or from their own internal databases.
But….
Look a little deeper and the jobs on offer are, shall we say, a little divorced from my skill set and working practices. This week I’ve been offered exciting opportunities as a help desk analyst at a staggering £15 an hour, two permanent Business Analyst roles , one in Leeds and one in Norwich (I live in Bristol) and a couple of Project Manager roles – again, one of them permanent – demanding technical skills that are nowhere to be found on my CV.
As an aside, why are they always “exciting”? In my world “exciting” means “badly managed”.
Anyway I have to conclude that these agencies cannot use a search function properly, make no attempt to verify the results of their searches and don’t bother reading the CVs they are pulling up. And if they are using their own data, clearly it needs a lot better data management that it’s been getting.
So it’s good to see them getting away from the monstrous Jobserve. Shame that they haven’t realised that bad CRM data is a lot more harmful than no CRM data.
Back to the drawing board chaps.
