Recruiters: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

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Recruitment and human resource personnel play important roles in the life of a graduate, an employee and a contractor. It is likened to the role doctors and nurses play in the life of a patient, one of diagnosis, treatment, care and cure. While doctors and nurses have regulatory bodies that enforce standards and professionalism, the same cannot be said about recruiters, recruitment agencies or human resource staff. At the very best, they are not living up to expectations as there is a growing trend of bad practices by rogue recruiters which appears to go unchecked and unregulated without any obvious means of making complaints that would result in a sanction. Sometimes it is incredible to see such practices go on with reckless abandon in a developed country.

There are however, very good and excellent recruiters that are professional and do amazing jobs, going over and above to help their clients, this class of recruiters are rare. Amongst other, they:

  1. have the interests of their clients at heart, understand their needs and career aspirations.
  2. They take out time to get to know you, developing healthy working relationships that grow stronger with time: putting a face to the CV.
  3. They understand the job market, your skill set and are able to provide good career advice based on the trend they see in the job market.
  4. They put in the shift to secure a suitable role with wages commensurate to your experience, sometimes exceeding your expectations.
  5. They have the sense of obligation to keep you updated as you progress through the recruitment stages.

It is sad to see the good work of this group of people get tainted by the bad and ugly practises of wannabe recruiters that don’t care about their client but are rather motivated by margins.

  1. They don’t read your CV or understand your career aspirations yet keep spamming you with emails and calls with irrelevant opportunities.
  2. They don’t understand the industry, skill sets or technology required for the roles they put forward.
  3. When you apply for a role, they call with no reference made to the role you applied for.
  4. They play pranks trying to get contact details of references from you so they can pursue other leads.
  5. They create fake jobs that don’t exists, or one with misleading headlines and payment.
  6. They make calls to fish for information about other agencies with thereby ruining your chances by putting forward other candidates at a lower wage.
  7. They have no courtesy or sense of professionalism to reply to emails, calls or messages sent.
  8. They don’t care to give feedback or updates for interviews you attend particularly if you were unsuccessful.
  9. They tell blatant lies.


The process involved in looking for your first job after graduation, a career move or a contract is a highly stressful one and most time frustrating. A job seeker spends time preparing a CV, looking for vacancies, writing covering letters, filling out job applications, preparing for and attending interviews as well as dealing with rejections and disappointments. All of which  has effects on the wellbeing of the individual mentally, physically and emotionally, sometimes leading to loss of self-confidence, belief and the onset of depression. Yet these bad and ugly wannabe recruiters including HR personnel prey on you making a very stressful situation demoralizing and more frustrating.

It is imperative that a check is put in place to curb these bad practices to avoid tarnishing the good professionals and giving a bad name to recruitment. Also a means of making complaints and blacklisting recruiters, recruitment agencies and companies that default is earnestly required. This should trigger swift an investigation that results in a penalty and/or sanction to deter others from treading the same path.

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About Author

Pele began his education in Nigeria before moving to the UK for a masters degree and subsequently a PhD in computer science. The sharp contrast in life and morals in the UK motivated him to start his blog, a website dedicated to sharing candid and virtuous views to enable individuals and families maximize their potentials in life, relationships and finances.

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