Recruitment Agents

Update (October 2011): Time passes and companies change. I should point out that this blog post was written a long time ago. I’m assured by Huntress that they have addressed the issues I mention below and are a much better company to work with these days. It’s certainly many years since I received an inappropriate email from them.

[Please read this entry for an update on this situation.]

The Huntress Group are a recruitment agency who seem to specialise in employing the most unprofessional agents that I’ve ever come across. I strongly recommend that you don’t deal with them.

I’ve now been a freelancer for ten years. Over that time I’ve dealt with a lot of recruitment agencies and my contact details and CV are stored in a lot of databases. This means that I’m often getting speculative phone calls and emails from agents asking what my current work situation is and what kind of jobs I’m interested in. This is fine.

Over that ten years, I’ve specialised in various areas. If a job requirement doesn’t involve moving data into or out of a database on a Unix platform (probably using Perl) then I’m not really likely to be interested. The most cursory glance at my CV would tell you this.

However, also over that ten years, the systems that I’ve worked on have interfaced with many other systems. So my CV contains phrases like “worked on interface with SAP system” or “exchanged data with Stratus system”. This is where the problem starts.

If you’re a lazy agent and you’re, for example, trying to fill an SAP role you might do a basic search in your database for CVs containing the phrase SAP. If you’re vaguely sentient then you’d check these CVs before contacting any matching candidates about the role. This simple check would remove inappropriate CVs like mine from the list.

And this is where Huntress go wrong. They seem to specialise in areas of computing (like SAP and Stratus) where I have no knowledge, no experience and no interest. But their lazy employees are constantly matching my CV in searches for roles in these areas and sending me emails asking if I’m interested in the role. I reply politely explaining their error and asking them to remove me from their database. My emails are always ignored.

So this is my next step. Hopefully, my Googlejuice will be good enough to get this page high up in a search for Huntress and people will read about their unprofessionalism and decide not to do business with them.

Here’s a partial list (I don’t think I’ve kept all the emails) of the inappropriate requirements that they have sent me. I’ll add to this list as more emails come in from them. I currently seem to be getting about one every two weeks.

Date Agent Job Description
23 Jun 2004 Jeni MacLucas Business Object Developer
28 Jul 2004 Anthony Kiamtia Business Objects Developer
16 Aug 2004 Jon Macauley SAP Training Lead
14 Sep 2004 Jon Macauley IT Analyst – SAP
17 Sep 2004 Anthony Kiamtia VB and SQL
20 Sep 2004 Anthony Kiamtia Java Developer
05 Nov 2004 Sanjay Daryanani Developer (VB, SQL Server, Cold Fusion)
24 Feb 2005 Gurvinder Bains APO/FI/MM/LES Trainers
13 Apr 2005 Gurvinder Bains Senior SAP Consultant
20 Apr 2005 Will Richardson SAP Administrator
21 Apr 2005 Charlie Loud Stratus Systems Administrator
23 Jun 2005 Robert Burling Oracle and Cognos datawarehouser

6 comments

  1. The problem, unfortunately, is not just with the Huntress Group; this misuse of data mining appears to be widespread in the recruitment sector. My CV mentions that I’m currently working towards a B.Sc(Hons) degree in Computing, yet I’ve been phoned and e-mailed about graduate level jobs by different agencies as a Java Developer that require 18 months of commercial experience. These agencies have, however, had the decency to take me off their lists after I contacted them.

  2. Oh, I agree entirely. Most recruitment agencies do this. However it’s the Huntress Group who are particularly pissing me off right now so they are the ones getting the brunt of my anger.

  3. Don’t deal with the Huntress group

    Dave over at Davblog is complaining that the rcruitment agents Huntress sending him spam. So it’s not just me, then. Dave says he keeps asking them to remove him from their mailing list and his pleas are ignored. I’m sure that when I dealt with them I …

  4. Hey would like to agree with you on many of the comments in regards to recruitment agencies. Myself I work in a consultancy who deal with many of the current technologies. One thing I will say is that in my company most of the consultants come from an IT background (myself being IT For a large multinationa for 6 years). The reason for this is that we want to have an understanding of what we are recruiting for. Suppose all I am saying is dont tar us all with the same brush! Cheers Cliff

  5. Yes, so many recruiters are very lazy. I’m a PHP / Drupal developer, and because I’ve worked for a company called Ruby Design, I get loads of calls and emails asking me if I’m interested in Ruby jobs, even though I have zero experience with that language.
    Worse than estate agents…

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