idealpeople blog

Gosh, we’ve been a little quiet of late. Apologies, things have been rather hectic over here preparing some major changes to our corporate website as well as managing what’s been a really good start to 2008 for us, and our upcoming expansion into China.

He who shall remain nameless - Idealpeople’s chief blog writer - has also been busy trying to identify and understand technology jobseekers, with the primary aim of developing the service we provide to jobseekers to be even more in line with what is expected by our candidate audience.

As part of this, we spoke to a technology professional - a software developer to be precise - earlier in the week to find out what his chief bugbears with the murky industry of recruitment are. Keeping with the anonymous theme, we won’t reveal his name, but his insights are useful.

So, candidate anonymous, I hear you have a job…
Yes thanks, it’s going really well.

So you don’t hear from recruiters much at the moment, right?
Well, no. Actually I still get quite a few calls. I guess I don’t mind hearing about really good and exciting jobs. It’s just that…

(Interrupting, rudely)Yeah, we’ll come on to that in a minute. You’ve had experiences with recruiters before though, right?
Yep. It’s inevitable when you’re working in IT. When you are looking for a new job, it’s really the most obvious path to go down when you’re after a job. In fact, contact with recruiters is virtually impossible to avoid.

Great. What WE want to know though is what really annoys you about the calls you do get….
Ok, so there’s three real problems I have.

Firstly, it’s recruiters who with-hold their phone number. I’ve gotten so fed up with this that I now refuse to answer my mobile if the number is with-held. You see, when you’re taking a call from a recruiter, you need to be away from your colleagues. You need to be somewhere private. So when you get a mystery call from a mystery person, are you supposed to just answer it, knowing it could be a recruiter and you’re not well-placed to take it? Besides, what have recruiters got to hide? Why hide the phone number in the first place?

Secondly, it’s recruiters who forget or can’t be bothered to ask if have the time to talk to them. When they call, why can’t they just say “can you speak?”, or “is now a good time?”. I had one recruiter who just launched into the questions. She was asking what my salary was. I was stood in a room full of colleagues at the time, how am I supposed to start talking about private stuff? A simple bit of courtesy would help. Ask me if now’s a good time and if it’s not arrange to call me back. Simple.

Thirdly, it’s recruiters who call me about jobs that are miles away. You get these people who are so desperate to fill a job they’ll call me about jobs that are 100 miles away. I know that some people are willing to or even looking to relocate, but once you’ve asked me and I’ve said no, don’t keep calling me about jobs that I can’t get to in a feasible length of time.

So there we have it ladies and gentlemen - if you want to get your candidates to like you, don’t with-hold phone numbers, be polite and call about *sensible* vacancies.

Coming to the blog this week - we’ve had loads of enquiries about work permits in the UK and how to go about it - we’ll post very honestly on what is a complex issue - and we’ll also be looking to offer some advice to companies out there who want/need to know how to write a job description - a tool which is often misunderstood and mis-used.

Make sure you don’t miss out by subscribing to the blog, or if you’d like to work with a company who don’t with-hold phone numbers, always check that candidates can speak before launching into a line of questions and have good geographical knowledge, you can register with us here.