Jobs Forum at My Horizon

Hi Guys, I know this is a new web site and all and is owned by the parent of www.irishjobs.ie. However, I have encountered a number of agencies that are a complete waste of time, no feedback on application, poor communication, poorly trained staff, discourtesy staff, poor application of duties to me there other customer....the list is endless. I'm I being to critical?

I've dealt with them from both sides, both as somebody looking for a job and as somebody interviewing candidates sent in by them and have to say recruitment agencies in this country are a complete joke!! When I was looking for a job (at the time the job market was a lot stronger) they were ringing me about jobs where I had none of the skills required or had I already told them I wasn't interested in that type of job, one agent when I told her why I wasn't interested actually said to me "Maybe I should have read your CV!!". As a recruiter they have sent people who are totally mismatched to the position and seem to think quantity over quality is the way to go and typically I would have discounted 75% of CVs as not even coming close to what we needed, totally wasting my time and constantly amazing me with the lack of knowledege they have of field they're supposed to be recruiting for. Don't even get me started on sites like IrishJobs, RecruitIreland and Monster where recruiters simply (and this is widely accepted) advertise jobs which do not exist purely so they can get their grubby little paws on your CV.

What absolutely amazes me in all this is the Irish workplace is a surprisingly small place and a company that actually gets its house in order and actually takes the time to know it's candidates and it's customers could actually do very very well in the long term.....rant over!! ;)

Hi all,

I worked for recruitment company, so have finally started to understand how the 'other side' works.

All recruitment companies have a database, which includes every CV sent. Now, the way they choose who to call for a position is based on a search of this database. So for example, they've got a financial postion and a requirement of a CIMA qualified person with tax experience - they search 'CIMA' and 'tax'. Any CV that matches this search will come up.
The trick is to make sure you highlight ALL words that match your target job. It sounds easy enough, but I've seen a number of CV's where people miss the obvious.
The best thing to do is do a search of jobs that you want and adjust your CV to match (only copy skills etc you actually have ; 0 ))

Also, consultants are professional networkers and you need to be too. Keep chatting to them, let your personality shine through. Be memorable.

Don't be scared to keep calling. You're 1 out of 100's of jobseekers, and you can't remember everybody.

It's easy to be depressed when you're out of work. I am too.....confidence is key!

It's true, most agencies don't actually have the positions advertised. All they really want to do is build up their databases. False hope for candidates in most cases.

interesting thread and I wasn't aware that recruitment agencies advertised non-existant jobs as a means to collect CVs. Most of the agencies are pretty poor I must agree.