Spray and Pray - another reason people don't like recruiters.......

I have just spoken to a great candidate that I have been speaking on and off to for 6 months. Great guy, a family man and someone that has been stitched up by the worst practice in recruitment – the very reason many people hate recruiters…the ‘spray and pray’ method.

Now believe it or not I actually get along with most of the recruiters that are my direct competitors. A few of them I hold in high esteem and they do a great job. They register good candidates, call the clients that really fit the requirements that the candidate wants and manage the process on a personal level trying to fit the right companies with the right candidates. They speak to the candidate about the company and if the candidate wants to be put forward they send the CV, speak to the company and talk through what the candidate is looking for, manages expectations, arranges interviews and gets all the ‘ducks in a row’ for everyone.

Then there are the ones that call a candidate, ask for their CV and ‘spec it’ (speculatively send it for those not familiar to the term) to every company within 25 miles (most commonly known as the spray and pray approach). If you have ever received a CV from a recruiter and miraculously they aren't available the likelihood is they don't want to interview with your company. Sometimes its because they have had a change of mind or looked into the company and decided its not for them. However more often than not they were sent and never even knew their CV was being sent to your company (along with the other 150 companies they have been sent to). Now other than the obvious issues here that they are not sure whether the candidate likes the company, whether the company is looking right now and whether they want to be put forward to that company; there is a host of other issues.

Let’s firstly focus on the candidate. The candidates name is EVERYWHERE. This leads to several issues for the candidate. Firstly the chances of their current company finding out is exceptionally high- our industry is a lot smaller than you think. Secondly is the company any sort of fit? Thirdly – what if the job doesn’t work out? Now every company within 25 miles saw your CV 6 months ago and now think you are jumping about (I promise every recruiter has heard the phrase “I saw this CV 6 ago and they are looking again??!”). Fourthly – most decent recruiters won't work with you now - the reason for this is it makes it commercially unviable. Even if they do talk to clients, find a decent company and opportunity then the likelihood is that ‘spray and pray’ recruiter will claim “they are representing that candidate” even if they just sprayed it everywhere 3 months before and the client never looked at it. Or quite rightly the company will say "of we received that CV last week" the difference being the candidate never had any idea they had been sent last week. Fifthly – our job is to sell you to the right company. All of us have nuances and maybe you have moved jobs a couple of times with good reason. Maybe you have a small gap in your employment history; possibly for a good reason too. This is why it is so important to not just ‘spray and pray’ as our job is to explain these nuances and personalise your situation, personality and requirements.

So how does this affect the potential employer negatively? Firstly there is a good chance if it is a really good candidate then what will happen is the candidate will be invited to 10 interviews – in essence ‘let the bidding war begin’. The chances of you paying an absolute premium is very high because you are not against 2 or 3 others – you are in a bidding war with 10 others. Also there is a good chance you will end up with an ‘agency dispute’. One agency has sent the CV everywhere and likely sent it out within 10 minutes of receiving the CV to all 250 cost consultancies in their database. The other has called you, spoken to the candidate about your business, narrowed it down to 2 or 3 businesses that match the candidates requirements and likely sent the CV to you a lot later than 10 minutes. So here is the question – which one do you go with? Unfortunately the rule many companies go with is ‘first to send the CV’ which I understand – but surely the candidate should know about it?? Also if you choose to go with the 'Spray and Pray' agency you will always receive CV's that 100 other consultancies have received simultaneously - not ideal.

I am lucky that a lot of my clients are pretty straight forward and see through companies that do this BS but I promise there are many recruitment agencies that make their living by sending candidates everywhere and hoping some ‘stick’. To be honest the biggest recruitment company in the construction sector is KNOWN FOR THIS. Worse still some clients refuse to interview the candidate due to issues with agencies clashing over candidate ownership so the candidate completely misses out on the opportunity. It’s all wrong and we all know it, but the question is “how do we stop it?”

Is it against GDPR – I am pretty sure it is. Some try to get round this by getting candidates to sign a ‘right to represent’ form and believe that gives them the right to send them everywhere. Some companies refuse to deal with certain agencies because of this but until this practice is banned recruitment will always be ‘a race to the bottom’.

Every business I speak to wants ‘quality over quantity’ but until this practice is no longer rewarded this will never be the case as they reward quantity over quality.

The candidate loses out, the client loses out, the recruiter that does things correctly loses out. The only people that benefit from this practice is the very agencies we all complain about. In this case my candidate is rightly worried that his current company will find out and has no idea where his CV has been sent and none of it is his doing.

Any ideas how we root this practice out please feel free to let me know – I am open to ideas. One thing I can say for sure; it is a practice that means the only person that wins is the recruiter and if nothing changes then both the candidates and clients will always come out worse off and those that do it properly will never be able to beat those that do the spray and pray method.