Do we have any on here? If so, I think your industry is going downhill. As mentioned on another thread I get lots of prospective CVs sent to me at work, and @50% are from recruitment agents. I’ve worked with a couple I trust for years now, and one of them put me forward for the position I’m in now. Crucially, if I’m looking for a position myself I would trust these guys to represent me in the way I’d represent myself, so I use them when I actually need to employ somebody. I get prospective CVs sent to me by agents for a range of positions, from minimum wage assembly operators, through design engineers, to £50K management roles, and some of the correspondence is diabolical. If I discovered an agent had sent an email representing me to a possible future employer which was the standard of some I’ve seen I’d be very annoyed. I have developed a standard reply: “If this candidate is accurately represented by the care you’ve shown in representing them, then I’m afraid there would be no place for them here”. This reply never, I repeat never, gets a response. Below is some text lifted directly from a recent email sent by an agent in a local office of a well known national agency: Dear Paul(Not my name) I ve representing a brilliant candidate for you with loads of experiences with buying bits for electronic PCBS and metal parts and painting painted parts and plastic parts and contractor s. This future employeer of yours is available for interview at all time and wants to move up to a manager position I kid you not, the above is more representative of what I receive than you’d think possible. Nasher.
I am currently on the job market, and was invited for interview with a director of an international property management company, in the centre of Manchester yesterday. On arrival, she asked me if we could do the interview across the road in a Starbucks, as she'd forgotten to book an interview room. We went to Starbucks and she let me pay for the two coffees. Haven't heard back yet as to whether I've got the job....
Agencies are generally shysters, set low standards and mostly fail to achieve them. They epitomise the culture bred by "The Apprentice" and seem to be staffed by the dimmest oiks imaginable. I have similar experience in dealing with them and receive umpteen unsolicited emails/CVs from them on a daily basis - all are tagged as junk mail by me and binned. There are one or two trusted agencies that I use, these tend to be specialists in a particular discipline and are often able to find candidates that our own team can't.....but these are in the minority....
Glad it's not just me. I was beginning to think I was just getting old and irritable. I compare them to estate agents and double glazing salesmen. Nasher
It has taken me just under 9 months to find a suitable canditate to fill a design enginners role within my team, even after stating specific requirements to the agency I still received CV's from candidates that were clearly unsuitable, it's a joke. We would like to present you with a candidate who has a vast experience in procuring electronic PCBS and mechanical products. This proposed candidate is seeking a managerial role to expand their skill set. They are available for interview at your convenience. Bit better than what they wrote but not perfect.
I get umpteen calls daily. From Hays, Magenta and Eden Brown etc etc. I never answer the phone. I bought my 916 of a guy from Eden Brown, which amused me as it they'd just gotten me the job which allowed me to buy the thing. Well, that and punting my T595 into the side of a van. Ive got a plethora of Hays emails atm. I keep telling them I live 5mins from work. I hate work, but its convenient and saves me 5-7k per yr working locally as I go home for lunch and walk in. I'd be tempted only by a job that allows me to mess around or look after bikes/cars. Thats highly unlikely to ever happen to me. The drudgery of pointless reports and assessments is my lot. Until I die. Which hopefully wont be any time soon as Im too sexy for death. Taylors once sent my CV to WS Atkins for whom I was working at the time. Which was embarrassing.
The Job market has changed a fair bit. My current role and salary is good, the job is interesting, if I go elsewhere my salary would be cut by approx 15k a year Eeeeeeeeeeeek best I stay where I am.
Architects. I hate the useless pompous nob heads with their skinny lattes and their failure to be able to use a fucking CAD program adequately and their inability to use said tool to draw a fucking straight line, use object snaps and draw a 2D GA on one fucking plane. Not to mention piss poor layering discipline, inserting 3D elements into 2D drawings and an utter failure to create an airtight 3D revit model. Wankers the lot of em.
@bootsam I feel your pain mate, and WTF is the crack with making a block then adding it to another block then adding it to another block. All three blocks are done on different layers. I spend so much time having to explode these just to delete non relevant data so I can reduce drawing size. Polar is good for drawing straight lines, if you have object snap on and you are close to an object it will snap to that sometimes.
Oh nested blocks...you'll send me off again...all on differing layers...with wipeouts and points. Aaaaaargh.... Yeah, its like theyve never heard of orthogonal.
Like all walks of life - you have to work hard to find the one who does what is needed and wanted, and hang on to them. There do seem very low barriers to entry to being in recruitment and that is reflected in the average I suggest. Not always though, legal types for example, have high barriers to entry but there are still wankers evident.
#2 son's best friend works for an employment agency in Leeds. Ordinarily I like his friend, however I was shocked to hear how unscrupulous they are to get business. "Shyster" is not a strong enough word to describe them.
Funny - i dont know what id do if i had to find another job....my boss always tells me if my CV passed his desk it would go straight in the bin but, he says he'd be in serious trouble if i left...! weird which is ironic as he handed his notice in last month... Just to add we do have a recruitment department but all the users i get on with, but, as i only look after the IT i dont know what theyre like on the phone...
Just for your info, I was a proper architect.........I learned everything I know from drawing using tee-square and set square on a drawing board; plus watching and talking to proper tradesmen. I started out with an architectural practice in 1969 as the office junior and the runner between offices, but within three months I was working on projects full-time. Although I had many positions with various organisations including the MoD and Government, I eventually became Design and Technical Director for a major housebuilder....this was just as Cad was beginning to become used in practices. When I formed my own company in 1995 I was appalled at the standard of work coming out of drawing offices which had been prepared on Cad..........and it became progressively worse. I'm glad I packed it all in.
