Worst. Recruitment Agent. Ever.
Today I was phoned by quite possibly the worst recruitment agent ever.
I don’t deal directly with recruitment. My job is to assess the need of an extra member of staff on my team, pick the people I want to see based on their CV, do the interviews, and then pick the person I think is best suited for the position. Everything else (which is admittedly a lot) is done by the very excellent HR (Human Resources) team so I don’t normally deal with recruitment agencies.
The girl on reception knows exactly what cold calling is and is fully prepared to say that I’m in a meeting or something. However, I decided to talk to this guy as I haven’t heard of the company before and thought I would just inform them that HR are the people to deal with. This is only polite and saves them from wasting time asking for me in the future.
I’m not going to say the name of the agency, or the agent, but this guy just seemed to phone up with the sole purpose of insulting people. After his initial pitch I understood that he was with an agency and said that I didn’t deal with recruitment agencies directly and that he would have better luck talking to HR. However, he came out with the following sentence, which he said in his most condescending manner.
Oh, I thought that you being Lead Developer of Research and Development, you would be involved in recruitment.
I was so tempted to put the phone down the the guy without even saying goodbye. I just told him that I would transfer him over to HR who would be able to help him. Transferred the call, and hung up.
Speaking to HR later on I learned that this guy had just flat-out lied to them. He said that he had been in contact with me for years, well before my time at Just Search. I have never heard this guys name before, or even his company’s name so that clearly wasn’t true. Not only that, but if he did know me, he should have at least asked me how I was. Aside from being impolite, I really don’t like people who lie, so I think it is safe to say that we won’t be dealing with them any more!
He had probably just picked my name and job title up from one of my social networking sites (eg. LinkedIn) and tried his luck. Part of me thinks that it must be some kind of crank call.
Written by: Philip Norton
Tags: agent, ever, Job, recruitment, worst
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