How to handle your recruitment consultant by Herbie Henderson
It’s not often you come across a book on recruitment that boasts its unique selling point as ‘the only book that teaches you, the candidate, how to handle those slippery little suckers’. The individuals referred to here are recruitment consultants, or, as the author in her one concession to brevity calls them, RCs. This unusual book focuses, in a rather blurred fashion, on how to deal with agencies rather than employers.
The author, who was once an RC herself, exposes the bad guys, sticks up for the good ones, excuses the ineffective, and generally explains why they act as they do. Armed with that understanding, the promise is that readers will develop techniques that result in registrations with agencies leading to real jobs. ‘A really good RC is, in essence, like a fabulous matchmaker, with an enviable little black book. And, without wishing to strangle the metaphor to death, doesn’t that have its appeal when compared to just responding randomly to a lonely hearts advert along with a gazillion other singletons gagging for a date?’
It’s all crammed into 18 gossipy chapters. There’s no white space, no bits to fill in, just lots of words. The author resists using one where 50 can be packed in. She frequently goes off at a tangent and just as frequently apologises for it.
The first nine chapters consider why to use a recruitment consultant, what their role is, the frustrations of their job, and how to choose the right one. Chapter 7, entitled ‘The seven secret keys that’ll bring them to their knees’, attempts a summary of the RC domestication process. How to handle the first face-to-face meeting with your carefully chosen RC comes in at Chapter 10, followed by chapters on pre and post-job interviews with the RC, dealing with offers and rejections, plus some troubleshooting tips and ‘RC Handling Commandments’.
I found the book disorganised, rambling, and rather silly at times. Long sentences veer off in strange directions, the layout is amateurish and cramped, the language colloquial and direct. However, in the muddle there are some really interesting and useful snippets. Taken in small doses it could provide valuable insights.
Irene Krechowiecka is a careers coach and journalist