Does an annoying sales strategy work?

Why do recruitment agents believe it is a good idea to annoy people they want to use their service? I just don’t get it and don’t believe it works, at least for most people in the IT industry. This approach may also explain why so many people dislike (to put it mildly) recruitment agents. I know many IT organisations are keen on getting in touch with people that isn’t active looking for a job to expand their pool of candidates, but find it difficult to reach these people. Most people that aren’t actively looking for job would not consider talking to an agent that try to start a dialogue by annoying them.

Today’s example:

The Nexus Group (Andrew Green) tried to join my network on LinkedIn despite the first paragraph in my profile says “I do NOT accept recruitment agencies in my network”.

To make it even more of a joke, Andrew writes “Looking at your profile I can see …”, so he claims to have read the profile. Lying or not being able to understand a simple message isn’t a good way of convincing people to use a service in my view.

Has the recruitment industry joined the spammers and just mass mail stuff and hope somebody falls for their “offer” despite their unprofessional sales strategy?

Interesting survey, 97% employers finding it difficult to attract staff

Chingwag Jobs a recruitment website in the UK has found 97% of the employers it surveyed are finding it difficult or impossible to attract qualified staff.

The survey is available here, worth a read, it cover a number of topics including a prediction on the use of freelance staff and how to attract more people in the 30s.

A new trend in (UK) recruitment?

There seems be a new trend in UK recruitment to use in-house recruitment teams instead of relaying on recruitment agencies. I have in the last 3-4 months been contacted by more in-house recruitment teams than in the previous 12-15 months and I don’t think it is down to changed market conditions.

A trend like this is, in my view
- Not surprising
- Positive for employers
- Positive for employees

The trend is not surprising because so many recruitments agencies do so poor a job that it is waste of time to listen to their endless sales talk about a job they don’t know much about and that and has no relevance if you manage to get concrete information. This seems to be a wide spread view on recruitment agencies in the IT industry, so it isn’t surprising companies begin to cut out this middleman.

The trend is positive for employers because they can get in touch with candidates that don’t waste time on recruitment agencies unless they are actively looking for a job, this leads to a bigger pool of potential candidates.

The trend is positive for employees because the in-house teams are far more professional than most recruitment agencies and isn’t trying to persuade a person about a role unless they feel there is a real interest and they even know what the role is about – a rare thing for many recruitment agents. I have also noticed in-house teams often look for an organisational fit too rather than just a role fit.

So a win-win, companies get in touch with more people and the employees don’t have to deal wit recruitment agencies.

Does this reflect what you are seeing?

PS: I don’t say all recruitment agencies are cowboys and deliver work that is shoddy and of questionable value, there a few, very few, that are doing a great job.