There are a lot of recruitment consultants on LinkedIn, a lot of good ones and a lot of bad ones. Recruitment consultants do perhaps have a slightly tarnished reputation, the reason for this is because most people have experienced a bad recruitment consultant(s) and it's the interaction with the bad ones that seem to stick in peoples minds.
I will repeat, there are a lot of great recruitment consultants, doing a great job.
I got thinking, what was it that annoyed me about those bad recruitment consultants and here are the points I came up with, if you have any others please add them in the comments.
Getting angry when you are not interested in a position
In a similar experience I have had with people calling me about changing electricity suppliers, I tell them I'm not interested and then the person is saying angrily, "What do you mean, you don't want to save money".
One recruitment consultant couldn't believe I wasn't interested in the job he was offering, he kept repeating the question. The conversation ended
"are you telling me, you don't want to do the same job for more money"
"yes, goodbye"
I remember thinking, I don't want to deal with you and I would prefer you not to get the commission
Recruitment consultants giving themselves the title of CRM Consultant
This is a recent phenomenon but recruitment consultants are not CRM consultants so why are they giving themselves this title. This one has me a bit puzzled, I assume it's a way to improve people accepting their connection requests!?!?!?
Send invites in LinkedIn without writing anything
Recruitment consultants send you an LinkedIn invite without bothering to type any message, nothing to say why they are contacting, why it would be good to connect with them.
They couldn't be bothered to type a message, when trying to connect with someone they have never met.
Posting fake jobs just to get useful contacts
Some recruitment agents have been known to post juicy, high paying roles to get candidates to reply and then send their CV off to the companies they have on their list.
Sending inappropriate\speculative jobs - Desperation
I'm convinced everyone must have been sent an inappropriate job from a recruitment consultant. I have been sent jobs for Senior Office 365 engineer. Office 365 isn't mentioned anywhere in my profile.
Other positions I have been sent are junior/first jobs. It makes me wonder how many emails/inMails these recruitment consultants send until they manage to hit the right target. Please save both you and the person you are mailing by at least bothering to check their profile before sending a message.
Coming through the company switchboard and pretending to be a family member
One recruitment consultant called the main company number and then said he was my brother to talk to me. I have to give him A for effort but what if I didn't have a brother or he had passed away.
No communication
Recruitment consultants can be eager to call you when they have a role but when you try to contact them about a role (which you haven't got but don't know yet) they can go suddenly very quiet and difficult to contact.
Use a conversation to collect information about the company
As much as I like helping people, sometimes the recruitment consultants need to realize they have called someone at work and maybe the person doesn't want to answer your 50 questions about the company and the names/positions of the employees.
All Seperately posting a quiz/funny picture/something about Friday
These useless pictures clog up LinkedIn and it's very tempting for people to hide your posts to stop seeing them in the future
I have recently heard first-hand how a recruitment consultant not only failed to get someone a job but also managed to get them fired from their current role! So the candidate had a final stage interview arranged and was very keen to get himself a bigger salary. The consultant had an idea. Surely if he sent the candidate’s CV to all of the competitor businesses in the local area, he would get the candidate some more interviews and this would allow him to “sell” the candidate to the highest bidder. The consultant already had a list of companies in the candidate’s industry and he put all of the email addresses in a list to mail merge an introductory “speculative” approach. The consultant did not check with the candidate and just sent out the email with his full CV attached. The CV landed in the inbox of the candidate’s own Managing Director! The M.D went crazy and called the candidate straight into a meeting to find out what had happened. The candidate was told if he wasn't happy in his job, he should hand his notice in or get fired. The candidate was obviously mad at the consultant and ended up suing the agency and winning the case. He was compensated handsomely prior to it going to court. It may surprise you to learn that the consultant is still working in recruitment for the same company!
Some more bad practices in this post
I will leave it up to the recruitment consultants to create a post on the good things good recruitment consultants do, in fact there probably is one, please post it in the comments
picture used Alan Isherwood
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