Time to start blogging!

Having set this up some time ago with every intention of keeping it up to date it is with some embarassment that it went no further than two posts!

Well that's about to change, honest.

We've had a very busy few months which I'm sure most of you would agree is a pretty positive sign for everyone in business.  Both Wavelength Public Practice Recruitment and Wavelength Employment Services has seen an improvement in levels of business and showing little sign of slowing at present.

I have been kept particularly busy with one particular client, a PLC with a number of sites across the UK.  They have a very lean HR function who were suddenly faced with the prospect of recruiting an additional 40+ staff and no resources to spare to do it.  I was asked to act as a consultant to the business and given start to finish responsibility for resourcing a large number of these roles in a variety of disciplines including Marketing, Procurement, Logistics, Sales.  This entailed advertising, networking, dealing with numerous agencies through to interviewing and obtaining references.

This project has been extremely frantic but great fun to do and has benefited the client in terms of time and money saved. It's also be a bit of an eye opener in terms of recruitment industry practices.

As part of the role I dealt with a wide variety of agencies from well known executive level recruiters to local "one man bands" and one of the most shocking things they all had in common was that they rarely (in some cases - never) met their candidates! I have to say I'm still not entirely sure if I am being naive or old fashioned in expecting agencies to meet their candidates?

Where's the added value if candidates aren't met and CVs/Sales profiles aren't prepared?  How do they even know they are who they say they are or are entitled to work in the UK for instance?? Yet agency fees don't appear to be any lower to compensate for the reduced service levels, how is that right and why are employers paying them? 

Makes you wonder doesn't it? Having briefly considered whether we should adopt these practices and use the spare time to play golf /go shopping*delete as appropriate we decided to stick to our old fashioned guns and continue offering a service where both client and candidate are met and understood and the service personalised to suit the individual circumstances. 

Ok rant over! I'll sign off for now, all comments welcomed.