011 Why is the recruitment industry often vilified, and does it matter?

Recruitment is often a vilified profession, much-maligned by candidates who feel they are poorly treated.  And as our audience (you!) consists of agency workers we thought we should examine why.  To help us do that, we spoke to Tim Jacob who has some 25 years experience as a recruiter and now advises recruitment firms on how to grow, increase profitability and deliver value.

In considering how tensions arise, we first need to understand that the role of recruitment is much much broader than simply placing candidates into vacancies, yet ultimately it is getting such placements right that drive profits.  We also need to understand that recruiters have two different audiences: clients who pay for the service, and candidates who might go on to work for the clients.  The needs of these two audiences are not always aligned, and occasionally there are unrealistic expectations from either or both parties.  Join us for lots of eyeopeners about how recruitment actually works in practice, why it is important to understand this, and how you can use the insights to your advantage.

About Tim Jacob

• Tim began his career in Technology Recruitment with Computer People in 1995 as part of their Graduate Recruitment Scheme.
• Spent 13 years as Commercial Director at Rethink Group a Technology Talent Solutions company making circa 8,000 placements (contract and perm) per year into to media, tech and digital space.
• Sat for 2 years on the board of the REC, the largest trade body for the recruitment profession.
• Now works at Squadrato which provides the practice advice, senior counsel and action-led consulting that businesses need to develop from transactional recruitment agencies in to professional providers of staffing services.
• Squadrato’s website is here
• Squadrato’s LinkedIn page is here