The Investigation: employment agencies
With unemployment at the highest it's been for the last decade, there are thousands of people in the job market at the moment. Many of us will be using agencies to help find work, but what else could you be finding when you send your CV off to an agency?
The Investigation on today's Morning Extra has been uncovering the tricks of the trade used by rogue employment agencies to take advantage of people searching for work. They include advertising fake jobs, failing to check qualifications to work and hefty markups.
They may appear to be victimless scams but industry professionals have told us how they can shatter a job hunter's already fragile confidence.
What has your experience been of employment agencies? Call me now on 0500 92 95 00... or leave your comments here.
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As this targets the people that seek employment would it not be better for these same job seeking people to compare notes and black list such agencies? Agencies look for methods to increase revenue and take such revenue from the very people they need to run their business. If more people shared information regards the agencies that fall foul and named and shamed them we would see the culling of the vulture-style companies. Considering the cost to businesses increase at the benefit of a third party level of detached human resources you would think companies would now steer clear of such mechanisms. If a company can employ a person for a lower cost then contract them then it makes financial sense to eliminate this middle-man mentality. The argument is that they handle the headaches, reduce some costs of employing a full-time person and provide another legal layer to protect the companies from the client. Stand up for your rights as the individual, become informed and consider your situation. We, the employees, are the assets that they count on. We are both valuable and provide the goods or services they require. We should be able to promote, negotiate and carry out our business directly with the businesses we wish to work with.
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Was listening to this program in the car on the way into work. I found it very interesting. I work for a company who use Agency staff on a regular basis, and I have had experience of, and I know that Agency staff have had a lot of issues with them. One of the major issues is that if a job comes up that is temporary, which most of our posts are, it comes up on our internal website. I have known people who are members of the agency who are perfect for the postion, their CV would back it up, but they are never put forward for the position. It has taken hours of phone calls and pestering to get them to put the CV forward. But I have to stick up for some Agencies - who do seem to get it right, and have sent me excellent candidates to interview and have been very much interested in the feedback that I give the non successfull candidates, and this has been passed on.
I was very interested in the website that employers of agencies and agency staff can use to note their feedback, however, I missed the addess. Is this posted anywhere?
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As co/owner of a recruitment business I listened to the programme with interest. Needless to say there was a very negative undertone some of it justified, some of it not and some misrepresentation was in evidence. I can only give my opinion and present how we carry out our duties. The recruitment industry is a large part of the fabric of the UK economy turning over more than 26 billion. I do feel that the industry needs more control to eradicate the less scrupulous operators; however I do believe that there are a vast number of elite and trustworthy recruitment service providers.
A recruitment business is effectively a facilitator between the end user (client) and the job applicant (candidate). Every recruitment business is driven by needs of demand and supply where the Client has a pivotal part to play and drives the success of the process through this demand.
The perfect recruitment placement is an economy of efforts between the recruitment consultancy, the job applicant and the client, with the consultancy controlling the process. If the process is followed the chance of successful placement will result. If any of the equilibrium is diluted or broken there is little chance of success, for example a candidate may have other interviews or job offers pending, additionally a client needs can change.
Within our business we have a very personal approach, we see in person over 90% of our candidates where logistically possible, we validate their identity, validate their certification, skills test where appropriate and invest time having an objective interview with a resultant plan. This plan may include having permission to approach identified clients, the candidate is informed of every step of this process via phone call or letter or email or database text. The client is also informed.
As a commercial business it is important that we recognise the key priorities of where we spend our time, our success depends on it, if we cant help a candidate for ANY reason we tell them.
Measures we put in place include strictly controlled ISO audits where we weekly audit our consultants as measure of quality leading to service and delivery.
We have a full time employee contacting EVERY candidate who applies to our business to recognise their application and gain basic information to start the process, as you can imagine this Is a costly exercise as we are inundated with applications
We call all our temporary staff weekly as we do our clients to measure our service and their performance.
We NEVER advertise old vacancies these are purged every Friday afternoon in conjunction with the consultants; however some advertising partners readvertise our vacancies WITHOUT our permission as they are trying to attract more traffic to their websites.
We engage with the University of the West of Scotland who carry out candidate and client surveys for us once a year, we listen and act on their reported feedback, this includes a competitor survey.
The point raised on margin was interesting as we have an arranged margin in most cases and are driven by the clients budget in which we have to build an attractive rate. I think what was failed to mention was the fact that most recruitment businesses are factored (very expensive) meaning that they have to borrow money at a cost to payroll the candidates wages and the end users business. Our margin is never 51% or even 103% as mentioned on the programme.
All our clients know their costs of engagement and are happy to proceed; we always obtain a signature for this and are audited weekly.
There is always a spin side such as found fees where clients will falsely engage with a recruitment consultancy with the sole objective of cv gathering and no intention of paying for the service, a recent example we had worked on project for no less than 3 months, by keeping in touch with our candidates we found they had been directly engaged by the client, this cost a recruitment consultant her job due to the current financial climate.
I feel that there are two sides to every story and accept there are some shady operators in the market , however in general the UK recruitment industry has been devalued by default, we are not all bad
Martin McCrum
Aspirare Recruitment Scotland
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As a contributor to this programme I wasn't too impressed by the tenor. Firstly, there was no critical distinction made between someone who is employed PAYE by the agency and the majority who are essentially forced to operate limited companies via agencies, thanks to S134 legislation. This point is critical because the programme overly dwelled on agency margins or cuts. If you operate a Ltd Co then you are in business and a real business at that therefore, as a director, you are bound to maximise your companies income. If someone's business accumen allows them to double your daily rate then live with it, as you have failed to research and negotiate a better deal for yourself.
The programme erroneous referred to those who use agencies (via Ltd Co) as "employees". The are NOT employees of the end client - they are employees of their own Ltd Co's.
There was talk about agencies checking employment status, normally done by agencies taking copies of passports which is firstly not their place to do, this is something the end client must do and secondly blatantly illegal. The offical advice is that only "employers" require to verify "right-to-work" status and if a passort image is taken, crucial identity theft prone details are obfuscated.
Agencies should not need reference checks as this should be sought by the end-client only when permission to contact a reference is obtained by the candidate from the referee. Direct reference to end-client is all that is required and it should be done late in the end-clients process e.g. when they have made technical or ability checks. Candidates should not provide agencies with "cold-call" oportunities by giving references. Having a previous client "cold-called" does not engraciate you for a future return!
Agencies regularly drop candiates in the employment law smelly stuff by not ensuring that the terms and conditions in the upper and lower contracts match. They then have in the small print that the candidate bears full costs should the agency require to participate is say, an IR35 investigation. Both agencies and end-clients need to operate transparent business-to-business based contracts.
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The Professional Contractors Group, in association with HiScores (also a participant in the programme) have a facility called AgencyWatch in place, where hard facts from members regarding agency practice are gathered so that the PCG can pressent non-anecdotal evidence to DBERR. This is one measure to help root out the rogues and present constrctive critisism to DBERR and REC.
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Another point I made on the programme which I believe is crucial for candidates (and verified by a BBC researcher I was told). There is a company call iProfiles who profess to provide a central repository for CVs that candidates can use and more crucially allow agencies to search CVs. iProfiles are deficient in a number of ways in my experience. Firstly, a number of agencies of have "signed up" to iProfiles will pass your CV to iProfiles automatically and if you are not already registered, will create a profile on your behalf. Their automatic system will parse your CV and present information in your profile but their system mangles your CV to be nonsensical at best, unreadable at worst. I and many, many, others (including the BCC researcher) have had this happen.
There is a data protection issue of the agency passing your personal information to a third party. There is an identify theft issue of your details being presented on iProfiles. Also, mangled CV is not doing you any favours either.
I found my CV on iProfiles and suggest that you do the same as me. Delete as much of the information as the system will allow and obfucaste anything else.
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well said sir. I rang in to make this very point and was half-way through telling a young lady the reason there needs to be transparency when my building suffered a powercut thereby disconnecting my VOIP call.
"Agencies regularly drop candidates in the employment law smelly stuff by not ensuring that the terms and conditions in the upper and lower contracts match". Agreed but you can mitigate and get top representation funded inexpensively here[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
"Both agencies and end-clients need to operate transparent business-to-business based contracts". Totally agree, we need to create an environment of professionalism sadly lacking in the freelancer Marketplace. The individual contractors/freelancers need to be more professional in the way they present and market themselves. To achieve this they need to be better informed. The other hand in this 'virtual handshake' within the "Job Diamond" is that of Agencies and Clients and they need to be more professional in defining the requirements and treating the Freelancers as professional revenue generators and highly-qualified system enablers. Anybody who wants free access to guides that will help freelancers and agencies understand each others role in the marketplace are available, simply google "Freelancers Business Support".
I hope this is of assistance.
John.
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Many thanks to Graham for taking my call on this morning's show, where I discussed how agencies censor and edit CVs to push people into unsuitable positions in order to reach sales quotas.
Listening to the full show I was intrigued to learn that I share a very negative experience with Todd, the former recruiter who was interviewed for the investigation. Like Todd, an agency also put me into a job in the NHS with no clearance, no background check, no training, no experience in the job, and no support from anybody either in the NHS or the agency. Critically, they also put me on the NHS database. We hear news stories on a weekly basis of data theft and security breaches, but no one seems to care about how agencies all but encourage these problems by shuttling candidates into the NHS blind. My time in the NHS ranks as one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. I have chronicled it here http://bit.ly/10gCNG
I would be curious to hear if other people have been put into the same situation, where the only choice available was between the NHS front lines or an agency blacklist.
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Excellent investigation, Graeme - Ken MacDonald and the team deserve a medal!! This whole business has been a racket for at least a decade. I
blame Gordon Brown. He turned up at Wellgate Job Centre in Dundee back
in January 1998 to launch the UK's New Deal. I was third in the queue,
and there were two other Labour Ministers there that day - Donald Dewar and Brian Wilson from the old Scottish Office - as well as all the top
brass up from London. I asked to see the Executive and Professional Job Vacancies Register ..... and panic ensued. A senior civil servant jumps
in to explain to Ministers that this no longer existed - and I actually
got this in writing 9 months later after I drafted a mock Parliamentary
Bill to get this reinstated and make it compulsory to notify vacancies to the state employment service with a built in clype line and a system
of Justice of The Peace courts and fines to enforce this. It was legally drafted and included a short illustrative appendix listing some of the top jobs in Scotland that had been filled without being advertised and a Short Title for the Bill 'The New Labour Stitch-Up Prevention Bill
1998'. It was posted off to various Ministries (Scottish Office, Welsh Office, HM Treasury, Department of Employment) for 'consultation' - and
Peter Hain in Wales replied enthusiastically as did Alex Salmond MP. In
Scotland, however, the only official response was from a Scottish Office civil servant Jillian Gilchrist [still with The Scottish Executive) who replied on behalf of Lord Gus MacDonald to say that 'as you know, the old Executive and Professional Vacancies register was privatised in 1984 and ceased to exist in 1988'. She suggested I refer the matter to DfEE
in London as 'Job Search support' was of course a matter for Whitehall
and was also not devolved under the 1998 Scotland Act despite lobbying.
A bit of further digging suggested this was not accidental. Privatisation in this area leads to fragmentation and seems
nuts - so why did it happen? Well as your programme said it
is a £27 billion business - and a few senior DfEE civil servants moved over into the private recruitment business I suspect as well ....
I didn't get a response from HM Treasury - so I wrote to them again and again pointing out that this whole market was dysfunctional .... but all
I ever got back was standard New Deal guff about 'duties and responsibilities' etc No follow up. No analysis. And no jobs.
The other scandal was of course that there was also no integrated careers service on offer with New Deal in 1998. Split between 70
different agencies in Scotland at that time. They then spend the
next three years trying to sort that and many Scottish Enterprise bonuses later come up with Careers Scotland. Then they spend the next three years de-merging it from Scottish Enterprise .........
Deeply frustrating of course for every single job-seeker but officials make thousands of pounds in bonuses and this private sector recruitment business burgeons even though as your investigation showed it is corrupt,
dysfunctional and deeply flawed. The one good thing about the current employment crisis, however, is that now people are starting to notice.
So thanks for your investigation - on behalf of Scotland's long-suffering long-term unemployed.
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Did you really say it was £27 BILLION industry, Graeme? Unbelievable!!!
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I must have misheard that figure .... please tell me I misheard ...??!!
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I listened to the programme this morning. The focus seemed to be on people who submitted C.V.'s and were in the white collar sector.
I, like thousands of others, are in the blue collar sector. I have worked with five agencies over the last three years and have to say that they, with one exception, are full of 'Effluent!'.
Normally the JobcentrePlus site is full of agencies advertising jobs that are 'Permanent', when contact is made with the agency concerned, they always say 'It's permanent when we have work, otherwise it's temporary!' Why are these people allowed to advertise at the Jobcentre in the first place?
I would rather have a full time job, with a decent employer. Both are in short suppply these days.
As mentioned in today's programme, very often the jobs dont exist.
Another sore point is, it is often hard to get the money out of them for the hours you have worked, they come up with all sorts of excuses as to why they cant pay.
One I worked for in Motherwell told me the client had went bust. Thats not my problem, I work for the agency, that is who is responsible for paying me, not the client.
At the moment, many agencies are cutting pay for those who work for them using the present economic climate as an excuse.
If you want work, you have to accept lower pay or do without. For those with a family, this is not a choice.
In the June edition of 'Truck & Driver' magazine, there is an article referring to agency pay cuts, pointing out the matter has been discussed by truck drivers on the Trucknet UK & Truckersworld sites on the internet.
Asda has cut the pay for agency drivers at their Falkirk & Grangemouth RDC's, they have also withdrawn the 8 hour guaranteed day as well, so if you turn up for work and they decide they dont want you, then you get no pay!
Agencies, and the employers who use them, would like you to believe that they are in the flexible labour market, and that flexibilty is an asset to business and commerce. Nothing could be further from the truth!
It is the ability to quickly hire & fire that is the benefit to be gained for both of them.
The ability to use and dispose of employees is a much valued asset in the UK today.
BT's announcement that they would dispose of thousands of agency workers while at the same time creating a smoke screen by intimating that their own workforce would be protected to a degree from the cuts. It would be interesting to know how many of those agency workers were originally BT employees before being disposed of at an earlier time.
Mnay employers have large agency work forces,they dont want full time employees of their own, agency staff are easier to get rid off.
The TUC recently agreed with the CBI that agency workers would have the same terms and conditions as employers full time staff after three months. They seem to think this is a cause for celebration.
They dont seem to have the brains to realise that what will happen is that agency workers will work two months and three weeks then get laid off for a week to break the qualifying period up.
That is the reality of the matter.
This matter is worthy of further debate on Morning Extra.
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But even if I got that bit wrong there is certainly an awful lot of dosh in making it as difficult as possible for the unemployed to get back into work. As someone said on the programme 'Middlemen!!' and we all
know that middlemen make money ..... 'markups' on misery ... making
a fast buck out of deliberately engineered labour market inefficiency.
Some of the scams were horrifying ...... stripping the CVs using ads
for jobs that don't exist is deeply immoral ......
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But it made for a cracker of a programme ..... even if it was a slightly depressing start to the week ..... would have commented earlier but my
computer has been going slow in protest ..... here in free-lance Hell!
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Your other statistic about the number of agencies was also pretty staggering ....... what was it? 6,000? Or 16,000?!! I can't quite
remember that one either but I nearly fell off my chair groaning!
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Meanwhile newspapers die through the collapse of job advertisements and the property market ....... it makes you want to read broadsheets just out of devilment! Compulsory job notification and compulsory job ads in
Scotland's quality newspapers for all public sector posts could fix this
- though we might need price regulation per word .......?
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As someone who has worked in the recruitment industry for many years, I share the revulsion that contributors have for unethical and illegal practices. In our agency, we have never felt there needed to be a conflict between having a successful business and treating candidates with respect - quite the reverse. I would like to make a few observations:
On illegal practice: There is already quite comprehensive and thoughtful legislation on the statute books, covering everything from advertising to holiday pay to equal opportunities to checking for eligibility to work in the UK. There is, however, too light a touch when it comes to policing. I think that rogue agencies are too confident of getting away with bad behaviour. As a reputable agency, we would be delighted to see them shut down.
On size: Yes, it's 27 billion. Bear in mind however that this is a gross billings figure, the bulk of which is temp wages. Also, yes, it is 16,000 agencies. However, rather than deciding that this is a bad thing, we should be glad there are so many and that the power is not concentrated in too few hands (but watch out - this is changing). The best protection against excessive mark-ups after all is competition.
So, to policy-makers, I would say enforce exisiting legislation and encourage healthy, fair, legal competition in the interests of the candidates. And, to candidates, my advice would be to shop around. And, if you are worried about "stripping" of your CV, take precautions and use discretion at first.
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Thanks Freddie for confirming the figures ...... but last time I looked there were only seven days in the working/searching week .... seven into 16,000 is ... um ... 2,285.7 websites to search per day ..... divided by
24 is 95 per hour divided by 60 is 1.587 per minute .... would it not be easier to have all the agencies and all the vacancies on one website a bit like Amazon or Abebooks and then us mere mortals might actually find the right job in the right place in a fraction of a second - and then be
able to focus our time and efforts on writing e-application letters and not chasing shadows ...... this is not beyond the wit of man - except of
course that raising efficiency in this area would eat into profits and also expose the lack of real job vacancies embarrassing politicians ???
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If you have to use and agency as an employer (e.g. PAYE) and you are experiencing difficulty with them, particularly payment, they are probably in breach of contract so you can simply find out which other agencies the end client uses and approach them (after seeking refs from other sources of course). As your current agency are in breach, they can't do anything legally about it. Also most end-clients are very happy to know that a agency that they are using is having difficulties.
Obviously if you current agency is having cashflow difficulties because of the end-client, which you can probably verify by talking to other agency workers, then it is time to consider your options.
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Oh and Neil, from the National Statisics Office .....
"At the start of 2006, the number of enterprises with no employees was 3.3 million, equivalent to 73.0 per cent of all enterprises.
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Enterprises with no employees are either sole proprietorships and partnerships comprising only the self-employed owner-manager(s), or companies comprising only an employee director. They had an estimated combined turnover of £208 billion.
So, that is what we are worth to the UK economy and they have the gaul to introduce IR35 and attempt to resurrect S660 (or the Family Business Tax as it was coined).
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I listened to the spokesperson from S1Jobs on Drivetime last eve. It would be an exercise in futility to make complaints to them IMHO as they would have to bite the hand that feeds them to take up your complaint. Not really going to happen, is it!
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Cowlairs said :
"Asda has cut the pay for agency drivers at their Falkirk & Grangemouth RDC's, they have also withdrawn the 8 hour guaranteed day as well, so if you turn up for work and they decide they dont want you, then you get no pay!"
What is your employment realtionship with your agency? Is this contractually binding? You should seek advice.
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Agencies of course are not all bad news. There are plenty of good ones. Agencies perform two very useful functions namely :-
1) They find work (doing so yourself can be very time consuming and expensive).
2) They factor invoices.
As for the end-clients, they need both educating and persuading to change their modus operandi. Freelancers, in conjunction with agencies and their professional organisations, need to stop end-clients dealing with freelancers via the "employee" channels of Human Resources. End-clients expose themselves and freelancers to employment law challenges from HMRC because they want to treat freelancers as bum-on-seat temporary employees. This really has to stop and that is why true business-to-business contracts are required.
There also needs to be a "right to be self employed" status enshrined in law - both employment and tax.
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There seems to be no end to the evil that is the recruitment agency..... however, as eloquently pointed out by the minority - they do provide a valuable service that when run properly creates a win-win situation on all sides. The rogue agencies that are out there (and yes, there are a few) very rarely last any length of time before either closing down or changing their name and/or directors.
As to the terrible crime of changing a candidates CV - again yes, there are unscrupulous people out there who will do this till it becomes unrecognisable, but the majority of agencies out there will only improve the layout and after talking with the candidate, be able to add in information that was missed out - I know this, as this is what I do and have done for many years. It is amazing what people forget to put in, or don't think is relevant - we are still a nation that doesn't sell themselves enough. I always tell candidates what Im doing and why, and will forward on a copy if the candidate wants. I refuse to believe that I am unique in this. People pay money to have their CV improved and we are doing it at no charge - again this is a win-win situation.
As to the charges, well if a candidate asked me what my margin was - I would not tell them - sorry, but as with many agencies, my margin depends on skill set, length of contract and numbers - it does not effect their rate. It is also part of how I win business, so why would I voluntarily give out that information?
And now as to the size of the charges - I frequently am astounded by how much agencies will charge and cannot get my head round the amounts. By now I like to think that I have a pretty good knowledge of the industry and cannot see how some fees can possibly be justified. But who's fault is that? The greedy (or canny) business who has pushed the client to pay the fee, or the client who has not looked around for a better quote? I have actually had people reticent to use me because my fees are substantially less than the large national companies. We offer the same service, use the same methods, perhaps don't have the same candidate database (because we DO NOT advertise fake jobs), but what we do have is bang up to date, but they think that there is something wrong with us because we offer a fixed fee and not some ridiculous percentage. Again - who's at fault?
I feel passionately about this industry and as with many sectors, there are alot of problems - but please remember that there are also alot of exceptional agencies out there who do believe in what they do and manage to get employment for people who may have struggled on their own. And until I win the lottery, I will not feel guilty about making money while I'm doing it..... Long live the Recruitment Agency!
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Sorry Donna, but I have never in my 20+ years in dealing with agencies had them improve my CV, nor even offer to improve it. A quick straw poll with the eight contractors around me say the same. You must add another exception to your bag of industry standard rules.
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Another word of advice to less experienced readers who use agencies. Umberalla companies, particularly those who offer schemes where you retain 80+% of gross and may use off-shore trusts. If you've been offered this or are already in a scheme, please make yourself aware of HMRC/Treasury BN66 and then take legal advice!
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Well, I've experienced some of the recruitment industry's idea of working with candidates to improve their CVs, and it's a joke. One agency told me that my American university "didnae count" in Scotland, because it wasn't from a recognised UK university, and therefore I should delete it; the same went for my US high school degree; and at another agency then there was the girl who demanded to know "how comes you've no got any Scottish qualifications?", failing to comprehend how I could not have formal qualifications from a country I didn't grow up in. In that same vein yet another agency told me that I had no Scottish qualifications, therefore I had no qualifications, full stop. I refused to censor my CV in any way to make these girls happy, only to find, as I described on the radio yesterday, that another agency just went ahead and did it anyway.
Note I said "girls". I was never paired with a recruiter who was over the age of 22. I was never paired with a recruiter who had *any* business experience whatsoever. I was never paired with a recruiter who had *any* higher education. During an interview one recruiter cheerfully informed me that her sole working experience before joining the agency was working as a holiday rep in Ibiza.
What's the connection between that and "creative editing" of CVs? It's that the people making these decisions are literally a bunch of kids who lack the perspective and experience to understand what it is they're doing to people's lives and futures. It's the toxic mix of inexperience, jealousy, and in the west of Scotland, levelling social attitudes (how dare you be more accomplished than anyone else - we'll put a stop to that.) Put them all together under a sales quota and commission schedule and what results is very, very ugly.
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#19 writes:
Oh and Neil, from the National Statisics Office .....
"At the start of 2006, the number of enterprises with no employees was 3.3 million, equivalent to 73.0 per cent of all enterprises.
.
.
Enterprises with no employees are either sole proprietorships and partnerships comprising only the self-employed owner-manager(s), or companies comprising only an employee director. They had an estimated combined turnover of ?208 billion.
Neil writes: "Thanks a billion!"
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