Basic recruitment ethics: disclosure
Your CV belongs to you. The data in your CV belong to you. You alone can choose who you want to share your CV with.
The agency wants to send your CV to a client company of theirs, and thinks you’d be “great for the role”, and “is certain” they can get you an interview, and has “never met a better candidate”, and “will buy you a beer” when they see you next.
But they won’t tell you the name of their client.
Time to find a new agency.
There is no good reason to withhold this information. There are plenty of bad reasons – you’ll cut us out of the loop, you’ll get another agency to represent you, you’ll tell your friends who’ll go directly to the client – but not a single good one. It all comes down to trust, and the question of whether you can trust an agency that doesn’t trust you.
No recruiter likes to hear “I’ve already received this CV from another agency”. A lot of hiring managers bin any CV received from two different sources, which puts you out of the picture altogether.
And even worse, there are agencies out there that send your CV off for open roles without even telling you that much.
The key frustration for me, from a recruiter’s viewpoint, is that even though we’re offering full disclosure, and even if 90% of other recruitment companies are, it only takes one agency to “do the dirty” to make it look like none of us are doing our jobs properly. CV arrives twice, therefore recruitment agencies aren’t screening their candidates properly.
We had a case like this last week. Our candidate was dropped from the running after the client received his application from two sources. We had written authorisation to represent the jobseeker at the named client. The candidate hadn’t spoken to the other agency in eight weeks, and they’d never mentioned roles in Belgium, let alone with the company in question.
The market’s pretty tough at the moment, and we’re seeing more and more dirty tricks, but this is one that’s dressed up as “company policy” far too often.
As a jobseeker, insist on this information. Don’t expect it until the end of your conversation with the recruiter, but make sure you get it then. It will save you heartache, and put the pressure on the non-compliant to get their acts together.
As an organisation that prides itself on long term business relationships I don’t feel it is unfair to wait until a face to face meeting before offering complete disclosure. This highlights commitment from ‘both sides’.
Also, does the EAA (Employment Agencies Act) cover Belgium?I try to educate clients that we would not submit a candidate / consultant without evidence of permission to be submitted for a particular requirement and this email verification can help in cases whereby less reputable agencies are simply throwing CVs in mass across to a client.
Thoughts?
Tom, thanks for your comment.
Waiting for full-disclosure until you’ve got a face-to-face meeting sounds fine if it comes before the CV is marketed to the client. We don’t do many face-to-face meetings in the Belgian IT contract market: a lot of the time it’s phone interviews with UK-based operators.
EEA doesn’t cover Belgium. But we have to honour the privacy of personal data laws that are more or less common to each EU member. The evidence of permission is important to us to, and a selling point, but the difference between educating clients and *trying* to educate them is a marked one, I’m afraid.
I am glad to see that others take these ethics as seriously as me. I have returned to my previous employer after spending 3 months with a large UK national consultancy whose treatment of candidates was awful. They adopt the approach of sending as many CV’s as quickly as possible to their clients in order to prevent other agencies from submitting. Effectively tying up the vacancies and the applicants. And this is a company which takes on trainees with no prior recruiting experience.
Fortunately my old boss allowed me back to a firm where a face to face meeting with candidates is required before 1. The candidate is given any client information and 2. The client is given any candidate information.
It may seem that were loosing out to the bigger agency now but I know we will not lose out in the long term.
Thanks for your comments, Stuart. I agree with all of it, and would add that the job becomes a hell of a lot more satisfying when it’s done properly. Anybody with little recruitment experience can match keywords and send CVs, but it’s a short-lived satisfaction.
Getting the role done on the basis of trust and contacts makes the workday immeasurably more interesting.