It seems every candidate (and nearly every client) has one question on their lips…"what's the market like?".  OK, so it's like this, if you are a candidate the number of jobs in the market place is decreasing (slightly), if you are a client the number of candidates is increasing rapidly and if you are a recruitment agency, you'd better have some value to bring your clients!

Quite good really, the truth is the recruitment market in the UK is a £26Bn a year business, REC (The Recruitment & Employment Confederation) are predicting a 20-30% shrinkage of the market…that's still a £18.2Bn market at worst.  This implies there will still be jobs for candidates and unfortunately still a market to support a lot of poor recruitment agencies (ah well you can't have it all…maybe not quite as many though).

As a candidate you do need to sharpen your game and think hard about how you will get your next job.  Referral and networking is by far and away the most efficient way and we are seeing a lot of clients using tools such as LinkedIn (if you are a candidate, get on it and build your profile to 100% now!) and doing a lot more direct advertising.  If you are going to use recruitment agencies, please do not register with every man and his dog, call a few, meet a few but work with the people you like.  Truth is most recruitment agencies are rubbish, however you will find a few great consultants who don't see you just as a walking fee. (My God here is an awful story, I was told by a client that she had been offered 2 candidate placements for the price of 1 last week.  F$@k me, candidates are now being sold in BOGOFs like cans of beans! These are human lives we were dealing with!). 

Qualify the recruitment agency, ask them outright "do you think you can help me? It's OK if you can't I just want to use my time effectively".  Make sure you work with the ones who can help you and don't spend time chasing those who can't or who just don't want to.

Take time to revisit that CV, hone it…get your achievements screaming out of the page (ditch the god awful summary at the top that tells us you are inspiring, motivating etc.).  Get your education at the top, if you haven't got one, no matter, but please don't list a long trail of qualifications that add up to nothing, skills in WordPerfect were probably useful 20 years ago but now it reads like a filler.  Do NOT USE Word templates, format your CV to be unique, a reflection of you.  With the number of CV's rising, the human beings that read them are switched off by the same old boring Word format.

Make sure your last job/current job's responsibilities and achievements make it on the first page and keep the whole thing to 2 pages, 3 if you must, but it probably won't be read.

You are not going to want to hear this but this is how most agencies work.  They look at:

1. Your education, bottom line most of the time Graduates get priority
2. Location – does it fit with the jobs they have
3. Age (this is not to see if you are old) they are looking to see if your career progression fits with your age, if you are 50 years old and a territory sales representative the agency is going to struggle getting an interview…50 and a Sales Director or in a position of seniority they will look more kindly on you.  Bottom line is if you are 30 and a Sales Director your phone will ring off the hook.  It's there, you can't ignore it.  If you don't put your D.O.B on the CV they will work it out from your school leaving or graduation date.  If it were me, I'd save the hassle and stick my D.O.B. on the CV.  Bottom line is I turn 38 this year and I know for a premier league footballer I am finished and for a candidate I may be pushing it to stay in the squad.
4. Blue chip company, who are you working for? Do they know them, do you compete with a client?
5. What have you done? Chances are if you are selling in a B-B environment you will get called about B-B selling jobs, lateral thinkers most recruitment consultants are not.  It's not their fault they are paid to play closest to the fee and put in as little effort as possible.  Putting you as a candidate in a box is the most effective way of doing this.

That's it, it doesn't get more complicated than that.  So to cut through the crap, give them what they want up front and then qualify whether they can help you or not, keep it simple. 

If you are going to post your CV on job boards, keep refreshing it, agencies are now just searching the most recent posts.  Make sure you accurately fill in salary and skills data, a lot of agencies have Indian outsourcing companies doing their searching. These companies use very strict rules when searching the databases, they do not do broad thinking, rather sticking to strict criteria. Attention to these details is important.  If you do post your CV on a job board, include your contact details, don't block agencies from calling you, rather qualify hard when they do.  If it's not right for you be crystal clear you do not want the opportunity.

This is an important point, a lot of agencies are getting desperate (2 for 1 is a sure sign of desperation) that means there is more chance an unscrupulous consultant is going to use your details in a manner you may not want them to.  Be crystal clear with them, if you don't have enough information on the job tell them to NOT send your CV, be firm, leave the call with the consultant clear on what YOU want the action to be.

Of course this could all be nonsense and I am sure it's going to upset recruitment agencies but I have been doing this now for 17 years with time spent both agency and client side.  I know what a great agency looks like and does and I also know what the majority do.  If I were a candidate I would work with people I like agency side but this would be few, I would focus most of my time on referring and actively supporting and nurturing my personal and business network.  Hiring in these times can not be left to chance and most companies given a solid referral candidate would take them over a candidate supplied by an agency, fact.

Of course Chemistry are one of the few I would work with, with 80%+ of our hires made via our referral network, we practice what we preach

Hope this has helped some candidates (and if it has annoyed some agencies then that's a bonus).

R