I have a question for you guys (or maybe a few!). When you go about selecting recruitment companies to deal with, how do you go about it and do you use differnet companies for differing levels of position? I suppose also another relevent question is why do you use them! I tend to find that in this game its generally good talkers on the phone who can make a fairly accurate match to a spec with a cv, but the funny thing how do they know whether the person is right when they dont know the market place, or specifically work in one sector, the funny thing is even they dont know how they do it and cant explain any specific methodology, please stop me if you think I am talking rubbish. Does anyone know how they actually do this? is it just searching a database with a word search. I am fairly sure that whatever you may think 90% of agencies generally get a CV by hook or by crook, not even meet the person, somethimes not even speak to them, change the CV etc (you know what I mean) and send them over and hope one sticks. Do you actually have any idea what you are actually paying for? Dont worry this is leading somewhere I am just interested to hear your thoughts.

Adam,

Word of mouth mate........ I have used a couple of what I thought were excellent consultancies in recruitment.......infact they were so good that each time I went back to speak to the consultant with whom I had struck up a relationship with........they had moved on / had been poached by another company !!!! And dealing with the another person, never seemed quite to hit the same spot on understanding that I had received previously.

I have found one now, I think.....fingers crossed and this one came through word of mouth.

Richard

(sometimes it is useful to do the temp to perm thing as well. If you hire immediately and they leave after a month or two.....it can complicated with paperwork, etc....... prefer to hire atemp and then possibly turn them permanent after a trial period)

Adam,

I work for a secretarial & support recruitment consultancy and nearly 70% of our candidates and clients use our services because they have been recommended. This is the first recruitment firm I've worked in, but it's hard to believe that some agencies will just throw CV's at clients without any further thought, Our agency interviews and fully references every candidate, temp and perm. If you want more info then email me, we're currently looking for clients to utilise our call centre recruitment capabilities.

Come to think of it, if you know of other call centres that use agencies on a preferres supplier list basis, then let me know.

Nick.