Recruitment Consultants and the Recession: Who Wins?

“I’m sorry, we’re not looking to extend our current database of temps at the moment”,  the voice at the end of the line is laced with a familiar weariness, which pretty much sums up the tone of all the other phone calls I’ve just made.  In the last hour I’ve been rejected by five recruitment and temping agencies and I’m starting to feel that if I hear the phrase “in the current climate” once more, the poor consultant at the end of the line will hear the first stages of my inevitable job search breakdown.

I have never been the most talented and successful of job searchers: the work I have come upon has often been by lucky happenstance. Now I find myself with an honours degree, studying for a masters and apparently unemployable. A familiar story? After endless rejections, rewritten CVs and long tedious application forms, surely I could rely on the agencies.  Or are they facing just as many problems as the rest of us in the dreaded ‘current climate’?

We all know the figures by now; according to National Statistics Online, as of February this year unemployment in the UK had risen to 6.7% taking the number of unemployed up to over 2.1 million, its highest since 1997.  So just how are the agencies and consultants and agencies that deal with getting people into work coping with the new challenges of this emerging job market?  I talked to two people with experience of working in the recruitment sector about the challenges they face.

My first port of call was Nicola, 22, a friend from university who was recently ‘let go’ from her position at a leading recruitment company.  In her time there I’d seen her sink further into worry and stress as her strict targets grew more and more difficult to achieve.  She went into the job with no experience of recruitment, and at a time when the market had begun its steady downturn.

Nicola’s employers didn’t feel that the downturn should affect the aims of their staff she says, “They accepted that times were harder, but didn’t see it as much of a problem, targets stayed the same as the recession was not seen to be a problem.”  Just looking at these targets gives you an idea of the pressure that comes with the job: expected to arrange weekly meetings with over 50 members, while searching for job vacancies, contacting businesses and bringing in new members to the programme.  It seems to me understandable that Nicola found it so difficult to meet her targets.

Even in her year at the company, Nicola noticed some growing trends in the responses she received from the businesses she approached.  “There was a great heightening in reluctance to take on permanent members of staff – which made my job harder because my targets were based on placing permanent members of staff.”  The employers were now reluctant to take on full time employees, with the responsibilities that come with that, they now prefer ‘long term temporary placements’.  Nicola now finds herself working for a temp agency herself, facing the same challenges as myself.

When Roger McGeachin, 35, found himself facing redundancy at the end of 2008 he took it as a challenge rather than a defeat.  With a proven record in the recruitment field, years of experience, and as a runner up for Recruitment Consultant of the Year in the Scottish Recruitment Awards 2008, it seemed a logical step for Roger to use this experience to his benefit.  “I considered going it alone for a while and planned to do it in April this year, but was made redundant two weeks before Christmas so had to accelerate plans and start in the quietest quarter of the year.” Within the month he had started his own recruitment consultancy Kingfisher Search and Selection Ltd.

Roger seems confident, self assured, and in his own words “arrogant and full of chat”.

He believes that he has one major benefit over new starts in the industry: “I’m one of the only recruitment consultants to be consistently there for clients and candidates for 5 years

I’ve now got contacts with whom I’ve developed a relationship over 5 years, match that against a graduate, new to the sector, new to recruitment and working for a different company, clients will be more likely to work with me than them.”

While Roger believes that launching a business in these difficult times is positive as it allows him to understand how his business can cope in lean times, he finds there is added pressure. He says, “The difference is that now expansion and taking advantage of opportunities is harder to do unless you have cash reserves, the Banks are still reluctant, in my experience this year, to lend a thing to allow me to develop my own business.”

Above all it is the flexibility of working for himself that Roger enjoys.  With the freedom to set his own targets, work to his own schedule and to his own advantage. “But the direct benefit is that when I make money, it’s mine, all mine! And the tax man’s!”

That attitude is shared by one man who is very close to home for me, in that he actually lives there – my father, Derek Shand.  He was forced to re-evaluate his life after being spending time in hospital facing a heart condition.  His doctor told him in no uncertain terms that stress was a major contributing factor to his condition, and that his job as a Business Manager in the Royal Bank of Scotland was no doubt highly to blame.  So he spent a year on sick leave from the bank, considering his options (and chewing my ear off on the phone and in person while considering those options) and finally deciding to make the leap into self-employment.

 He now works as an independent business advisor to small businesses with his company ArranShand Business Development Services.  Working in conjunction with the Ayrshire Chamber of Commerce and Business Gateway he aims to help all those in the Ayrshire and Arran region to develop upon their business ideas and form a network of independent businesses that can work together. “Starting my own business was frightening,” says Derek, “but it’s all the more exciting getting customers and contracts when you know that it is directly helping yourself.”

So it seems that small business can be successful, and luckily for me I find myself with a pity job: working for my dad as a ‘Development Manager’, business speak for ‘General Skivvy’.  It seems in this competitive employment market, experience is key: Roger and Derek used theirs to build on their own success, while Nicola’s lack of experience meant she lost out to the effects of the crunch. 

So what would our consultants recommend as the best options in the dreaded “current climate”?

Nicola says “I would recommend that people contact the employer directly as employers are more reluctant to use recruitment agencies now, and that approaching your local Job Centre would perhaps be the best route for those looking for employment.”

For Derek independence is the key, “If you have the skills, experience and passion to start your own business, do it.  There is a support network out there for new starts; just get online, get down to your local Job Centre and discover what support is in your local area.  I cannot stress more the benefits of working for yourself; it could quite literally save my life!”